Man, that Trump-Putin phone call turned out to be a huge nothingburger. No visible progress and the Russians only offering the most transparently useless and cynical concession imaginable: a mutual stop of attacks on energy infrastructure for 30 days. Now that winter is coming to an end, their interest in bombing Ukrainian energy and heating infrastructure is of course winding down, while their interest in putting a stop to Ukrainian attacks on their refineries remains high.
Additionally, recent months have shown a frequency of roughly 14-21 days between major Russian attacks with ballistic missiles and such (as opposed to mere drone attacks which ofc happen daily). So a 30 day ceasefire on this type of attack basically means delaying their next "big one" by a week or two at most; and the low frequency suggests that they're limited by their ballistic missile production anyway. Skipping one round and launching twice as many Kalibrs and Iksandrs once the 30 days are up wouldn't change a damn thing.
To add insult to injury, the Kremlin has directly contradicted Trump's claim that Russia didn't demand a stop to US support for Ukraine.
I appreciate what Trump is trying to do in Ukraine, I really do - but it's already glaringly obvious that his strategy of opening the negotiations with flattering and unilateral concessions is a failure. He's proudly "talking hostile and carrying the big stick" when dealing with just about any other country, so it really baffles me how he or his team could ever believe that "talk gently and leave the big stick at home" would be a suitable approach for dealing with Russia.
