Not long ago, Donald Trump remarked of Volodymyr Zelensky: “The only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle.” Grossly unfair, plainly – but might the same thing be said of how Vladimir Putin is getting a tune of his own composition out of the Trump ceasefire plan?
It certainly feels that way. Thanks in part to the US pauses in the provision of intelligence and military assistance to Kyiv, President Putin’s forces have been making some headway on the battlefield. Indeed, such has been Russian success on the Kursk front that President Trump has issued a poignant plea on his Truth Social social media platform for Mr Putin to spare the lives of “thousands” of Ukrainian troops surrounded by the Russian military.
