Wednesday night brought a grim return to Russia’s form: one of the heaviest air raids on Kyiv since the full-scale invasion began. Moscow eased off its strikes on major cities in the run-up to the Alaska summit, and it held off its attack on the Ukrainian capital until Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy, had finished his visit there. But within hours of his departure, at least 18 people, including several children, were dead in an attack on a residential block, and the European Union mission had been severely damaged.
Donald Trump periodically suggests that he is drawing a line for Vladimir Putin. Yet each time he appears to set a limit, the Russian president breezes through it. The Kyiv attack shows that it is Mr Putin who is testing the US president. Mr Trump threatened “severe consequences” if Moscow did not immediately agree to a ceasefire – but in Anchorage was quickly persuaded by Mr Putin that there was no need for one prior to a peace deal.
“I think in many ways he’s there,” Mr Trump told reporters on Tuesday. But Russia’s diplomatic stalling, allowing it to continue to grind away on the battlefield, is transparent. The lethal strike on civilians in Kyiv shows exactly what it thinks of peace talks. As Mr Trump also remarked: “Every conversation I have with [Mr Putin] is a good conversation. And then unfortunately, a bomb is loaded up into Kyiv or someplace, and then I get very angry about it.”
The US president appears unable to draw the obvious conclusion, and his anger has yet to convert into action. He continues to cast blame on Volodymyr Zelenskyy (“not exactly innocent either”) for Russia’s unprovoked invasion. Mr Trump floated the idea of sanctions again, but only when pressed. His one concrete move – doubling the tariff on most Indian goods to 50% – was billed as punishment for New Delhi’s Russian oil imports.
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