Putin is game playing with Easter truce offer

Again…

Game playing by Putin with the announcement of an Easter truce - just as Kyiv is hit by another drone attack. No doubt he is trying to outmanoeuvre Zelensky in front of Trump - make Zelensky appear unreasonable and give Trump pretext then to pull all US support for Ukraine.

Worth highlighting here that there have been 28-odd ceasefires since Russian troops first crossed Ukraine’s borders back in 2014 and Russia never abided by any of them including most recently back in Bakhmut.

We saw Putin play the truce/ceasefire game around the various Minsk negotiations and again he never abided by any of them.

Likely Putin’s latest move comes as Trump threatens to walk away from peace talks if the sides don’t appear serious.

I am just debating if all this is being coordinated between the Trump and Putin teams to make Ukraine look bad, leave them isolated and let Trump do what he really wants to do and ally with Putin against China et al. Trump is desperate to normalise relations with Russia - get back to business.

Notable that in recent days we have seen Russia reveal what it sees as the basis for a permanent deal on Ukraine. And this is:

* Russia gets to keep and annex all five Ukrainian territories it currently wholly or partially occupies - so Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhiya and Kherson.

* No NATO membership for Ukraine;

* No foreign troops in Ukraine (aside from the Russian ones!);

* No US military support for Ukraine;

* Lifting of sanctions on Russia;

* Russia gets back its frozen assets.

Ukraine gets nothing but that worthless minerals deal with the U.S. Therein no Western business will invest in Ukraine unless any deal provides security assurances for Ukraine. And the terms above give Ukraine zero security, actually the insecurity of knowing Russia has been rewarded for its aggression and will attack again. And without US military support Ukraine will struggle to defend itself going forward, which Putin obviously knows.

So any deal based around the above is a disaster for Ukraine, meaning no Ukrainian leader, and especially not Zelensky, will be able to accept it. It is a recipe for economic and social failure and political instability - again which Putin knows but Trump and his team are oblivious to or they simply do not care.