Ever the statesman, always the general, Vladimir Putin both welcomed and scorned the joint American-Ukrainian ceasefire plan brought to his capital by US diplomats on Thursday night - trying to keep officials guessing if he would accept it or not.
As the politician, the president of the Russian Federation welcomed the proposal, stating that “the idea in itself to stop this conflict in a peaceful way - that's something that we support”.
But the military man who ordered his troops into Crimea in 2014, promised safety to trapped Ukrainian troops but massacred them in the Donbas that same year, and violated past ceasefires dozens of times, seems to want to have another go at annihilation.
In a joint press conference with Belrusian president and close ally Alexander Lukashenko, he boasted of Russia’s recent success in freeing Kursk from a Ukrainian incursion that has lasted since August last year, claiming that huge numbers of Kyiv’s forces were trapped there and complaining that a ceasefire now would be unfair.
“First of all, so what is happening with that area of incursion in Kursk?” he asked. “If we stop our military action for 30 days, what does that mean?
“That means that all the people that are there, military people, Ukrainians that are there, will have the opportunity to leave without the fight. Will we let them go all these people who committed crimes, or they're going to surrender?”
Many Ukrainians will recall the Iloviask massacre in August 2014 in Donetsk province, when Ukrainian troops were surrounded by Russian forces and offered a safe passage but tried to leave with their weapons. At least 366 were killed, and more than 150 went missing.
A nervous looking Putin dressed in fatigues visited Kursk on Wednesday to review the Russian operation. While there, he said that any Ukrainian soldiers captured on Russian territory would not be treated as prisoners of war.
“All those in the... Kursk region [who] committed crimes against the civilian population, opposed our armed forces, law enforcement agencies and special services, are terrorists in accordance to the laws of the Russian Federation,” he is quoted as saying on the semi-official Tass news agency.
Russian forces have a well earned reputation for murdering Ukrainians who have surrendered - just as they have for killing civilians in places like Bucha and Irpin, near Kyiv, at the start of their full scale invasion exactly three years ago.
Ukrainian soldiers know they risk a similar fate if they fall into Russian hands.
Putin went on to claim how, since Russia was doing so well on the other frontlines, it would be a huge concession to agree a ceasefire now.
“So how are they [Ukraine] going to use these 30 days? Are they going to use it in order to continue the forced mobilization in Ukraine, in order to supply weapons to those areas, in order to newly mobilize units to undergo training?”
Certainly Ukraine will do that. But as the US suspended all military aid to Ukraine for several days and has proved an unreliable supplier of intelligence, it is Russia that will be best placed to use a 30 day pause to rearm and reorganise.
Putin’s claim of imminent encirclement of Ukrainian forces is overblown. He has been throwing untold numbers of men and material into battles for towns like Pokrovsk, Kupyansk, and even Kharkiv but his forces have only inched forwards over months.
An opportunity to build up forces to try to land a killer blow would be welcomed by Moscow’s forces.
Ukraine has been forced in to agreeing to a ceasefire offer with terms that will be discussed further by Putin’s team. He may even meet top level envoys from Trump himself, behind closed doors.
He has laid out how, if he agreed to any kind of a ceasefire, it would be entirely as an act of statesman-like kindness in the context of a hard charging Russian advance.
In Kursk that’s what has been essentially achieved, largely thanks to the White House which blindsided Ukrainian troops with a blackout on their satellite and signal intelligence feeds that would have been vital for Ukrainians on the ground.
Hundreds, probably thousands of Ukrainians have keen killed in Kursk after Trump’s demonstration of passive aggression to a former ally in Kyiv.
So far the only consequence of a Russian refusal to sign a ceasefire has been Trump’s threat to hit Russia’s economy. US trade with Moscow is a minuscule $3.5 billion a year.
But if statesman-general Putin accepts a ceasefire then he can blame any breakdown on Ukraine, given that there are no independent sources of verification.
He’s only likely to do that when his troops are ready to deal a death blow to the Ukrainian troops he hopes to finally surround.
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