Yes means no

Putin might agree to a truce at some point. There’s a better chance he’ll break it.

The view from a Ukrainian trench looking toward Russian fighting positions in the eastern Donetsk region. (c. Martin Kuz)

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“I think he’ll keep his word. I’ve known him for a long time now, and I think he will. I don’t believe he’s going to violate his word.” — Donald Trump at the White House on Feb. 27, predicting Vladimir Putin would adhere to a potential ceasefire

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Serhiy Bachinsky watched Vladimir Putin violate his word every day for eight years. In 2014, after the Russian dictator began his invasion of Ukraine by sending troops in unmarked uniforms into Crimea and the country’s southeast, Serhiy volunteered with the Ukrainian military. By early 2022, as a full-time soldier with the rank of sergeant, he had survived Russia’s serial breaching of more than two dozen ceasefire accords.

Putin paved the road to his full-scale war with bogus promises of peace. When he announced his “special military operation” in a televised address three years ago, he offered more deceit, staring into the camera with eyes as empty as his assurances. “Our plans do not include the occupation of Ukrainian territories,” he said. “We are not going to impose anything on anyone by force.”

Serhiy and his army unit patrolled a network of trenches snaking through a desolate corner of the eastern region of Donetsk. I met him outside a ruined village 250 miles east of his hometown of Zaporizhzhia and still further removed from his former line of work as a sports academy instructor. His doughy face, genial disposition and ready wit reminded me of the TV comedian Andy Richter. When I asked his opinion of Ukraine’s belligerent neighbor, he smiled and said, “I divorced my wife because she was pro-Russian.”

International monitors assigned to track Russia’s incursion into Ukraine attempted to log each ceasefire violation starting in 2014. The firing of a single munition — bullet, artillery shell, mortar round, missile — counted as an infraction, and over the next eight years, the official total exceeded 1 million. Russian troops committed the overwhelming majority of transgressions — a fact that emerged even as they interfered with the work of observers by detaining them, firing at their vehicles and jamming their drones.

In April 2021, less than a year before Putin expanded his war to the rest of Ukraine, the top U.S. monitor reported that Moscow’s forces had committed some 6,600 violations that month alone. “Russia continues to actively obstruct the peace process while it fuels the conflict it launched more than seven years ago,” Courtney Austrian said. “In recent months, Russia sought to heighten tensions on the ground while denying it is a party to the conflict and perpetuating the false narrative that Russia is an impartial mediator.”

Serhiy endured the betrayals year after year alongside his fellow soldiers. “Putin thinks a truce is only meant for the other side,” he said, shaking his head. The small strips of camo fabric covering his helmet waved back and forth, resembling tendrils of seaweed underwater. “As soon as he opens his mouth, he is lying.”

Sgt. Serhiy Bachinsky joined the Ukrainian military after Russia’s initial invasion in 2014. “Putin thinks a truce is only meant for the other side,” he said. (c. Martin Kuz)

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President Trump thinks and believes otherwise. In huffing and puffing about a ceasefire, he has flattered Putin, scorned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and suspended shipment of U.S. weapons to and sharing of military intelligence with Ukraine. Those last two moves, coming in the wake of Trump berating Zelensky at the White House two weeks ago, aided Russia’s genocidal aims to kill Ukrainian civilians.

The weapons and intelligence began flowing again this week following a gathering Tuesday between Ukrainian and U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia. The Ukrainian delegation agreed to support a 30-day truce with Russia, and afterward, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who led the American team, asserted that the burden of peace lies with the Russians.

“We’re going to tell them this is what’s on the table: Ukraine is ready to stop shooting and start talking. And now it’ll be up to them to say yes or no,” Rubio told reporters, without divulging the details of a potential truce. “I hope they’re going to say yes. And if they do, then I think we’ve made great progress. If they say no, then we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here.”

All of which sounds encouraging yet lays bare the Trump administration’s dangerous myopia about Putin’s history in Ukraine. (And his history of bloody interventions in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Kazakhstan and other countries since rising to power a quarter-century ago.) At a press conference earlier today, the Russian ruler insisted that he supports the idea of a truce but added “there are issues that we need to discuss” with American negotiators.

A reasonable chance exists that Putin, if reassured by U.S. officials about certain preconditions, will consent sooner or later to a temporary ceasefire to pacify Trump’s need, infantile in its persistence, to claim credit for a “deal.” An equal or better chance exists that he will violate the agreement within hours — or sooner.

In September 2014, the day after Moscow and Kyiv signed an initial armistice, Russian forces fired on multiple Ukrainian positions. The next year, mere minutes into another announced truce, Putin’s troops resumed shelling across the front line. In 2020, showing somewhat more restraint, they waited a half hour before violating a new ceasefire.

The examples represent only a sampling of Putin’s “yes means no” strategy for thwarting peace, and nothing during his despot-for-life reign suggests he will abide by a truce. Russia’s battlefield gains over the past 18 months, if slow and achieved at a brutal cost to its army, increase the odds that he will reject a settlement unless Kyiv acquiesces to his maximalist demands. He will likely expect Ukraine to: cede Crimea and the four regions that Russian forces partly occupy; relinquish its NATO ambitions; slash the size of its military; and prohibit foreign troops from deploying on its soil.

If anyone imagined that Putin genuinely welcomed the Ukraine-U.S. talks in Saudi Arabia, he expressed his violent displeasure that night. Russia launched missiles and drones at cities across Ukraine, striking Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih. The attacks killed five people and occurred as Russian forces moved closer to recapturing Kursk, the region in western Russia where Ukrainian forces seized a swath of territory last summer in a surprise offensive.

Five more Ukrainian civilians died in another aerial assault last night while American officials flew to Moscow to discuss the truce proposal later today. More than anything else, the shuttle diplomacy reflects Trump’s misguided confidence that he can cajole Moscow to end the war. “Hopefully Russia will do the right thing,” he said this afternoon in the Oval Office.

His naivete, born of ironclad ego and airtight ignorance, contrasts with Zelensky’s wariness, rooted in broken promises and bitter experience. The Ukrainian leader knows that in any negotiation Putin will seek to enfeeble and isolate Kyiv, leaving the country vulnerable to another full-scale invasion. During a press conference Wednesday, Zelensky voiced a sentiment that pertains to the moment and most of Ukrainian history. “I have emphasized this repeatedly,” he said. “None of us trusts the Russians.”

His skepticism echoed Serhiy, who made the same point in more colorful terms as we stood in a trench within a mile of enemy troops. “There are some Russians we trust,” he said. “They are the dead ones.”

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— Trump’s antagonism of Europe and embrace of Russia has motivated European leaders to take long overdue steps toward military self-reliance. This brief and helpful analysis forecasts what the effort will require and how Europe can fill the military void if he abandons Ukraine.

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