Less than two days after US president Donald Trump lashed out at Vladimir Putin for “tapping me along” over a peace deal, the Russian president has announced another temporary ceasefire – this one scheduled to last three days.
His grand declaration raised immediate suspicion over whether this was yet another stalling tactic from the most conniving of dictators. One designed to keep an increasingly frustrated White House happy: Mr Trump’s top diplomat has even talked this week of pulling out of the entire negotiating process.
The Kremlin said the truce would take place from 8 to 10 May, to coincide with Russia’s Victory Day celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany – likely not a coincidence, given Putin’s repeated, completely baseless claims that a “neo-Nazi regime” in Ukraine justified his full-scale invasion.
The news was met in Ukraine with a large dose of scepticism. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky even accused Mr Putin of “yet another round of Russian manipulation” to appease Mr Trump.
Kyiv, which has previously agreed to Trump’s proposal of a 30-day full ceasefire, accused Moscow of violating a similar temporary truce during Easter.
Mr Zelensky charged Russia with cynically using that pause to advance, saying Russian assaults persisted on multiple fronts, artillery fire did not subside, and attacks on energy infrastructure were relentless.
“Putin is afraid to tell President Trump directly that he wants to continue this war and keep killing Ukrainians,” he wrote on his X account on Tuesday.
“That’s why, in Moscow, they are surrounding the ceasefire idea with such preconditions that it either fails or gets dragged out for as long as possible.
“Putin does this often—he doesn’t say ‘no’ outright, but he drags things out and makes reasonable solutions impossible”.
Ukrainian officials echoed this telling The Independent that the Russian president’s declaration was just “cheap PR”.
There are also unlikely to be celebrations on the ground in Ukraine. During the last ceasefire announcement, air-raid sirens blared in Kyiv, sending residents scrambling to shelters. On Monday morning, the same scene repeated – under a wave of drones. One popular Ukrainian Telegram group called it out as “another lie for Trump”.
Up until now, Putin has refused to accept a complete, unconditional, longterm ceasefire, saying it will only happen if there is a halt in Western arms supplies to Ukraine and Ukraine’s mobilisation effort.
The Kremlin has instead announced temporary pauses, violated them and then accused Ukraine offing the same. These actions have angered Mr Trump, whose administration is showing signs that it is tiring of the task of trying to resolve the biggest conflict in Europe since the Second World War.
US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, told NBC’s Meet the Press that this week would be “very critical”, as Washington needs to decide whether this is “an endeavour that we want to continue to be involved in or is it time to focus on other issues”.
Mr Trump, who in the past has maintained that a deal is close, at the weekend questioned Putin’s willingness to end the war at all, following long-range strikes on Kyiv.
“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities, and towns, over the last few days,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
“[It] makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘banking’ or ‘secondary sanctions’?”
And so for Ukraine the Kremlin’s announcement of another pause – which Russia will not adhere to – is simply to pacify Mr Trump, without any intention of a real end to the conflict.
For Ukrainians, anything less than a truce designed to start the process of a long-term ceasefire deal, is blast and bluster.
