IT is a sign of how badly Donald Trump has been played that Putin’s only concession to Kyiv was not to murder prisoners of war.
The ruthless Russian tyrant rejected calls for full 30-day ceasefire. He rejected calls to end all air strikes and attacks in the Black Sea.
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Instead he agreed to a limited pause – by both sides – on attacks on energy infrastructure.
Curiously, this was the only concession America asked for when Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last month.
And lying Lavrov shrugged it off. Speaking after the talks in Riyadh, he said: “The US proposed a moratorium on attacks on energy facilities at the talks.
“Russia explained that it does not attack civilian facilities.”
The fact Putin agreed to a pause suggests Ukraine’s long range strikes on Russia’s oil depots and refineries must be hurting.
And perhaps – after two and half years of hammering Ukraine’s national grid – Putin and knows there is not much more he can destroy.
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However, it was the Kremlin’s comments on Kursk that were most chilling and revealing.
Trump falsely claimed last week that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were surrounded in the province. This was a gross exaggeration.
Nonetheless, Trump appealed to Putin – via a post on his TruthSocial network – for Russia not to massacre them.
Yesterday the Kremlin responded, saying: “Putin confirmed that the Russian side is ready to be guided by humanitarian considerations and, in the event of surrender, guarantees the lives and decent treatment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers in accordance with Russian laws and international law.”
Of course this is a good thing. But it is a duty, not a mercy.
Putin has simply agreed to follow a most basic law of war.
He has agreed to abide by the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.
It begs two important questions. What else did he plan to do?
Secondly, were the previous murders of prisoners the acts of rogue, crazed soldiers?
Or as Ukraine has long argued, were they part of a deliberate Kremlin policy?
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