The “ceasefire” announced with trademark bombast by Team Trump 2.0 should be seen as a tawdry kabuki inside a cheap matryoshka.
As we peel off the successive masks, the last one standing inside the matryoshka is a woke transvestite tiny dancer: a Minsk 3 in drag.
Now cue to a “ceasefire” redux: President Putin in uniform only for the second time since the start of the SMO, dead serious, visiting the frontline in Kursk.
Finally, cue to the actual peel off operation: Putin’s press conference after his meeting with Lukashenko in Moscow.
Ceasefire? Of course. We support it. And then, methodically, diplomatically, the Russian President pulled a Caravaggio, and went all-out chiaroscuro on every geopolitical and military detail of the American gambit. A consumate artful deconstruction.
End result: the ball is now back in Donald Trump’s court. Incidentally the leader of the revamping-in-progress Empire of Chaos who does not (italics mine) have the cards.
The art of diplomatic nuance
That’s how diplomacy at the highest level works – something out of reach of American bumpkins of the Rubio variety.
Putin was gracious enough to thank “the President of the United States, Mr. Trump, for paying so much attention to resolving the conflict.”
After all the Americans also seem to be involved in “achieving a noble mission, a mission to stop hostilities and the loss of human lives.”
Then he went for the kill: “This ceasefire should lead to a long-term peace and eliminate the initial causes of this crisis.”
As in all Russian key imperatives – widely known since at least June 2024 – will have to be satisfied. After all, it’s Russia that’s winning the war in the battlefield, not the U.S., the – already fragmented – NATO, and much less Ukraine.
Putin was adamant on the ceasefire: “We are for it.”
But there are nuances; once again, it’s called diplomacy. Starting with verification – arguably the crux of Putin’s reasoning:
“These 30 days — how will they be used? To continue forced mobilization in Ukraine? To receive more arms supplies? To train newly mobilized units? Or will none of this happen?
How will the issues of control and verification be resolved? How can we be guaranteed that nothing like this will happen? How will the control be organized?
I hope that everyone understands this at the level of common sense. These are all serious issues.”
No: the collective EUrocracy, mired in demented Russophobia, does not understand “common sense”.
Once again Putin deferred, diplomatically, to the “need to work with our American partners. Maybe I will speak to President Trump.”
So there will be another phone call soon.
Trump, for his part, perennially floating on the clouds of bombast, already applied “leverage” on the negotiations – even before Putin’s detailed answer to the ceasefire kabuki.
He ramped up sanctions on Russia’s oil, gas and banking, allowing the waiver on Russian oil sales to expire this week.
That means in practice that the EUro-vassals and other assorted “allies” cannot buy Russian oil anymore without evading U.S. sanctions.
Even before that elements from Kiev criminal gang were begging for more sanctions on Russia as part of a “peace” plan. Trump obviously agreed by bypassing basic diplomacy once again. Only those with an IQ of less than zero can possibly believe that Moscow will support a ceasefire/’peace process” where it is sanctioned for attempting to end a war that it is actually winning in the battlefield – from Donbass to Kursk.
Sanctions will have to be at the heart of the possible U.S.-Russia negotiations. At least some of those thousands will have to go right from the start. Same for the $300 billion or so in Russian assets “seized” – as in stolen –, most of it parked in Brussels.
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