The oldest trick in the magician’s handbook is misdirection. The audience watches one hand – the other does the switch. President Putin is a master of these sorcerer’s arts.
In the past weeks in particular, he has shrewdly refined from the Cold War Playbook: make things look real that are fabricated, but appeal to power-brokers or influential groups in the West by making things look as if they are changing, when they are actually remaining the same.
In that vein, the weekend’s “ceasefire” in eastern Ukraine – which term demands the heavy use of air quotes – will very likely be over by the time the Easter eggs, east and west, are eaten. The fundamental diet is aggressive war.
But that brief truce is core to the wider illusion that a “real” peace deal is doable. It is easily sold to a propagandised Russian public, amplified by the official national Orthodox church as a sign that the atheist former KGB officer in the Kremlin has “got” religion.
Moscow does not care about contradiction: the “halting” of attacks in the east of Ukraine, came at the same time as a statement from the Kremlin that it is making progress in the war (a balance to keep its ultra-nationalists and generals happy).
The increased use of chemical weapons in the past months and horrific use of cluster munitions in two vast assaults on civilians on Palm Sunday killed over 35 people, injured scores more and were intended to terrorise. That, for anyone tempted to write glowingly about the revival of Russia’s love of religion, is the true story of this Easter.
Two external audiences matter to Putin from here on – the Trump administration, which is looking to its 100 day anniversary at the end of April and wants to see come concrete benefits, not least to Trump himself, of continuing the quest for peace talks with Russia. That is not as guaranteed as Putin would like.
He has weakness to consider too – Volodymyr Zelensky has gritted his teeth and accepted the necessity of signing a minerals deal with the US, whose ramifications can be dealt with over the coming decades. It is the price – erratic but essential – for any form of continuing support, but it is an inconvenience to Moscow. Because it suggests that Washington will defend some form of autonomy in Kyiv.
The second is European leaders who hate to face the unavoidable truth that Washington now deems Ukraine a “European problem.” That raises the question of how far the main financially-significant powers of the continent – France, Germany, Poland and the UK and the strategically vital smaller states of the Nordic states should go.
The answer is simple: don’t stop supporting Ukraine in practical and political terms. A large part of Russia’s aim to extract Ukraine from the major geo-political conversation is to wear away western support – and especially, test countries like Germany and Spain, where public feeling is more indifferent towards the invaded country. Memories of Russia’s role in past conflicts in Europe play into scare tactics about the risks of opposing Moscow, when the far greater one is to accept intimidation.
square NEWS AnalysisHow Putin's violation of Ukraine ceasefire shows Trump has failed again
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The most urgent need is resources – money to allow Ukraine to keep building its defence industry and supply the war effort. And while the JD Vance line of attack on Europe – that it has neglected its own defence has a large grain of truth in it, he is not cognisant or honest about the upward curve of European support.
As Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian leader, pointed out, “Members States [of] the European Union have contributed more than €23bn to Ukraine.”
Of course, that is not remotely sufficient to turn the course of the war – but allowing Kviv investment to spend on the “serious” kit of air defence systems and better long range missiles to deter Russia is also a pot of spending that can be used to buy weapons from the US (a cause close to Trump’s heart) and build up a European defence capacity. There is no cost-free way through this – but there is a huge cost to not meeting the moment.
My belief – having lived through the cycle of truces, limited ceasefires and a reversion to numerous conflicts on the Russian periphery and in the Balkans, is that there will be no durable peace until there is a reason for Moscow to accept the continued existence of Ukraine as any sort of sovereign state.
Under the Putin regime, there can’t be a path to peace – only toward delay, dither and deals. A Ukraine which keeps its independence, at the price of a “frozen conflict” in the occupied territories is better for Europe and the UK than one which is defeated or abandoned to death by a thousand non-existent truces.
Even in cynical terms it is a buffer against the highly likely expansionist tendency of Russia and its desire to destabilize the Balkans and inflict damage on western democracies by feeding misinformation campaigns and leveraging far-right, far-left and pretty much far-anything grievance machines in politics.
Tempting beliefs in Kissinger style “grand bargains” with trade-offs for the US in terms of Russia negotiating a settlement are fool’s gold. Far better to acknowledge the commercial realities of the Trump era, but keep an eye on the prize and risks beyond that.
It means pivoting tactics, but not abandoning strategy. It means tolerating a lot of paradox and vanity emanating from Team Trump, but keeping a steady course with a wide range of European allies and the UK, all of whom now have commanding self-interested reasons to stick together and begin to plan a future in which the US may be an ally in the background, but not a pillar of Europe’s freedom.
Most of all, it means not falling for an old Soviet ploy of a lie sold as the new truth, just in a 21st century Kremlin boss’s tracksuit. Because it is always the same trick.
Anne McElvoy is co-host of Politics at Sam and Anne’s
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