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The “ceasefire” announced with trademark bombast by Team Trump 2.0 should be seen as a tawdry kabuki inside a cheap matryoshka.

As we peel off the successive masks, the last one standing inside the matryoshka is a woke transvestite tiny dancer: a Minsk 3 in drag.

Now cue to a “ceasefire” redux: President Putin in uniform only for the second time since the start of the SMO, dead serious, visiting the frontline in Kursk.

Finally, cue to the actual peel off operation: Putin’s press conference after his meeting with Lukashenko in Moscow.

Ceasefire? Of course. We support it. And then, methodically, diplomatically, the Russian President pulled a Caravaggio, and went all-out chiaroscuro on every geopolitical and military detail of the American gambit. A consumate artful deconstruction.

End result: the ball is now back in Donald Trump’s court. Incidentally the leader of the revamping-in-progress Empire of Chaos who does not (italics mine) have the cards.

The art of diplomatic nuance

That’s how diplomacy at the highest level works – something out of reach of American bumpkins of the Rubio variety.

Putin was gracious enough to thank “the President of the United States, Mr. Trump, for paying so much attention to resolving the conflict.”

After all the Americans also seem to be involved in “achieving a noble mission, a mission to stop hostilities and the loss of human lives.”

Then he went for the kill: “This ceasefire should lead to a long-term peace and eliminate the initial causes of this crisis.”

As in all Russian key imperatives – widely known since at least June 2024 – will have to be satisfied. After all, it’s Russia that’s winning the war in the battlefield, not the U.S., the – already fragmented – NATO, and much less Ukraine.

Putin was adamant on the ceasefire: “We are for it.”

But there are nuances; once again, it’s called diplomacy. Starting with verification – arguably the crux of Putin’s reasoning:

“These 30 days — how will they be used? To continue forced mobilization in Ukraine? To receive more arms supplies? To train newly mobilized units? Or will none of this happen?

How will the issues of control and verification be resolved? How can we be guaranteed that nothing like this will happen? How will the control be organized?

I hope that everyone understands this at the level of common sense. These are all serious issues.”

No: the collective EUrocracy, mired in demented Russophobia, does not understand “common sense”.

Once again Putin deferred, diplomatically, to the “need to work with our American partners. Maybe I will speak to President Trump.”

So there will be another phone call soon.

Trump, for his part, perennially floating on the clouds of bombast, already applied “leverage” on the negotiations – even before Putin’s detailed answer to the ceasefire kabuki.

He ramped up sanctions on Russia’s oil, gas and banking, allowing the waiver on Russian oil sales to expire this week.

That means in practice that the EUro-vassals and other assorted “allies” cannot buy Russian oil anymore without evading U.S. sanctions.

Even before that elements from Kiev criminal gang were begging for more sanctions on Russia as part of a “peace” plan. Trump obviously agreed by bypassing basic diplomacy once again. Only those with an IQ of less than zero can possibly believe that Moscow will support a ceasefire/’peace process” where it is sanctioned for attempting to end a war that it is actually winning in the battlefield – from Donbass to Kursk.

Sanctions will have to be at the heart of the possible U.S.-Russia negotiations. At least some of those thousands will have to go right from the start. Same for the $300 billion or so in Russian assets “seized” – as in stolen –, most of it parked in Brussels.

I annex, therefore I am

Putin’s Caravaggio ceasefire painting reveals that he has absolutely no interest in antagonizing the notoriously volcanic Trump, or to put in peril the possibility of a U.S.-Russia détente in the making.

As for Kiev and the EUro-chihuahuas, they remain on the menu, and not on the table.

Predictably, Western MSM, as a wave of toxic detritus hitting a pristine shore, is spinning that Putin said “Nyet” to the ceasefire gambit as a prelude to scotching any negotiations about it.

These specimens would not understand the meaning of “diplomacy” even if it was a comet piercing the skies.

As for the spin on the Brits “helping” the Americans and the Ukrainians to concoct the ceasefire gambit, that does not even qualify as a crappy Monty Python sketch.

The Brit ruling classes, MI6, their media and think tanks, simply abhor any negotiations. They are at direct, frontal war with Russia, and their plan A – no plan B – remains the same: inflict a “strategic defeat” on Moscow, as the SVR knows inside out.

The heart of the matter is the Black Sea. Vladimir Karasev’s analysis, as explained to TASS, is spot on: “The British have already entered the city of Odessa, which they view as a key location. Their special services are heavily involved there. The British do not conceal their desire to establish a naval base in Odessa.”

Odessa is part of the extensive menu of Ukraine’s resources already, in thesis, handed over to the Brits under the shady – and completely illegal – 100-year agreement signed between Starmer and the sweaty sweatshirt in Kiev.

According to the dodgy deal and its made in the shade footnotes, Zelensky already gave away to the Brits all sorts of control over minerals, nuclear power plants, underground gas storage facilities, key ports (including Odessa), and hydroelectric power plants.

On the ongoing minerals/rare earth saga in 404 – or what will be left of it – the Brits are in vicious, direct competition with the Americans. The CIA is obviously in the know. This whole thing will turn very ugly in no time.

A serious discussion running across informed circles in Moscow is that Putin by all means will never sacrifice Russia’s “indivisibility of security” demands posed to Washington in December 2021 – and met with a no-response response. NATO of course will never agree to it. The final decision will have to come from POTU.S..

And that brings us to the ultimately pathetic role of NATO, graphically illustrated by POTU.S., in the Oval Office, gleefully expanding on his drive to annex both Canada and Greenland – both part of NATO – right in front of the sorry Dutch patsy Tutti Frutti o-Rutti, NATO’s Secretary General.

That amorphous slab of stale Dutch gouda cheese not only did not emit a peep about the annexations: he was gleaming like a baby in front of Trump.

That was NATO stripped bare: His Master’s Voice rules the way he wants it, and whatever he decides, even the “security” and territorial integrity of member states may be in peril. So go back to playing in your sandbox. Onwards to the next Putin-Trump phone call.