Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rightly rejected joining a disingenuous two-day ceasefire offered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian leader said he will suspend combat operations in Ukraine on Friday and Saturday. He wants Ukraine to do the same during Russia’s annual World War II victory day military parade on Saturday. Instead, Zelensky has announced that Ukraine will unilaterally suspend combat operations from midnight on Wednesday on an open-ended basis. It will respond “symmetrically” to any Russian military activity thereafter.
Ukraine recognizes that Putin doesn’t want this truce for the moral reason of remembering a historic victory. He wants this truce because he’s worried that without it, Ukraine will launch a deeply embarrassing attack on Moscow. An attack that undermines his credibility. But Zelensky is being clever in announcing an earlier ceasefire. That strategy allows him to put the pressure back on Putin by making clear that if Russia wants its Victory Day parade to go off without a hitch, it had better stop firing drones and missiles into Ukrainian cities from midnight on Wednesday. Ukraine’s commitment to an open-ended ceasefire is also designed to illuminate the falsity of Russia’s pledge to seek a peace deal. Ukraine knows that Russia is going to keep fighting.
This smart response to Putin’s KGB-style theatrics adds to the Russian leader’s challenge.
The war in Ukraine has dragged on for more than four years now, leaving hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers dead and Russia’s economy in crisis. Russia has made no substantive progress on the battlefield. It’s understandable, then, that Putin does not want his people or the world to witness a high-profile Ukrainian attack on Moscow during Saturday’s parade. To mitigate this threat, cellphone internet service in Moscow will be suspended on Saturday. And reflecting the strain the war has put on Russian military materiel, no ground equipment will be involved in this year’s display.
Regardless, the utterly disingenuous quality of Putin’s ceasefire deserves emphasizing.
Putin claims that by joining his unilateral ceasefire, Ukraine can “show its humanity.” Senior Putin adviser Yuri Ushakov further suggested the truce would pay homage to the dominant Orthodox Christian faith in Russia and Ukraine. It sounds good. Yet, consider what Putin has previously said about Ukraine.
Commencing the war in February 2022, Putin claimed Russia had to ensure the “denazification and demilitarization” of Ukraine from a “band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.” In his 2022 Victory Day speech, Putin argued that the war would mean that, “there is no place in the world for torturers, death squads and Nazis.” In his 2023 speech, Putin again condemned the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv. All of this begs a question.
Namely, why does Putin now want to give Russia’s modern “Nazi” enemies respite on a day that explicitly celebrates the defeat of Nazism in 1945?
The answer is clear, of course. He does not want Ukraine to have respite. Putin’s ceasefire is singularly designed to pressure Ukraine against launching an attack during the parade. Ukraine has emphasized its threat potential over the past few days, launching successive nightly drone raids on Moscow. Benefitting from longer-range drones with more advanced countermeasures, Ukraine is breaking through Russia’s once-potent air defense nets.
These Ukrainian drone attacks follow recent Russian strikes on the Ukrainian cities of Odesa and Dnipro, which have killed numerous civilians. Russia has repeatedly and wantonly targeted Ukrainian civilians throughout this war, even throwing missiles into pediatric hospitals.
But now it’s time for Putin to be afraid. Being that he will attend the parade in person, Russia has warned it will launch a “massive retaliatory missile strike” on Kyiv if the parade is targeted.
Ukraine was unlikely to attempt such a strike even before announcing its ceasefire. While, if Russia launches attacks on Ukraine on Thursday, Ukraine may launch symbolic attacks on other targets in and around Moscow, killing Putin would risk wholly unrestrained Russian warfare, and perhaps even a Russian nuclear response.
TRUMP SHOULD PULL TROOPS FROM ITALY AND SPAIN, NOT GERMANY
Still, that Putin is pushing so hard for this ceasefire shows how worried he is. And in that fear, Ukraine can already claim a significant strategic victory. In 2022, only Russia could hold at risk the entirety of Ukraine’s territory, political, and military power.
Today, Ukraine can and is doing the same to Russia. Putin knows it. And he’s desperate to avoid everyone else knowing it as well.