Trump may be slipping off Putin’s hook

 Is the latest Russian ceasefire announcement another meaningless gesture, an attempt to appease the US president who seems to have ended his bromance with the dictator in the Kremlin – or a genuine attempt to end the bloodshed in Ukraine? We can all hope it is the latter, but we should be very suspicious.

One factor is likely to be that Russia says it has now retaken all of Kursk oblast. Zelensky has thus lost one of his key bargaining chips, which might increase Putin’s willingness to bargain. Then, Russia has just seen another top general assassinated, virtually on the steps of the Kremlin. One can see why Putin and his close circle may be somewhat spooked by the ease with which the Ukrainian secret service or its proxies are now operating in the Russian capital.  

Virtually up until the Pope’s funeral at the weekend, all the advantage seemed to be with Putin, as Trump and his key lieutenants – most especially Steve Witkoff – seemed to be buttering up the Russian leader and bullying President Zelensky. Possibly the US president had his “Road to Damascus” moment at the Vatican on Saturday. Certainly he has now demanded a permanent ceasefire.

Meanwhile there is no real reason to believe the promises of the Russian president. Russia after all agreed to protect Ukraine when it signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, and this is at least the fourth ceasefire announcement in as many months. The 30-day ceasefire and the Black Sea ceasefire came to nothing from the Russian side, and in reality the Easter one largely did as well – except in Russian eyes to show Putin as a religious and caring soul over this Christian holiday.

Putin did, there can be little doubt, also order the chemical attack on my hometown of Salisbury in March 2018 which could have killed thousands of civilians here, in a failed attempt to kill one double agent. He seems to have complete disregard for civilian casualties and collateral damage, so there must be another reason for his latest offer.

It may be that the “mothers of Russia” are finally beginning to have an impact on Putin, who well knows they forced the Kremlin into an ignominious withdrawal and defeat in Afghanistan in the 1980s after the Russian Army suffered just 17,000 dead.  Many believe that this time Putin is responsible for sending around a million Russians to their deaths or serious injury. Maybe, at last, the state-controlled media can no longer suppress these horrendous casualty rates.

I judge the Russian army is very close to its culminating point, in other words it has run out of steam. With Trump possibly now siding more with Zelensky, Putin is perhaps canny enough to realise that if he can freeze the war as it is today he can probably paint it as a great victory; the converse could be a repeat of Afghanistan and no peaceful and wealthy retirement for him.

But I’d say this latest announcement is more likely to be an attempt by Putin to keep Trump on his hook, carrying on with his illegal war but avoiding serious US sanctions by skilfully playing the US president on his line. I hope I’m wrong.