Rachel Blevins: Trump – Putin phonecall

Rachel did a very thorough overview on the Trump – Putin phonecall, picking up on a number of critical details. She also picked up the issue of ‘energy infrastructure’ vs ‘energy and infrastructure’ which is a material change of language.

She says quite rightly that Putin tossed Trump a bone.

Rachel did not necessarily talk about this but this is my comment. Most interesting to me in terms of structuring a longer term ceasefire is how it can be done, given Mr.Putin’s comments previously and during the meeting that the front line is 2,000 kms and impossible to monitor. Instead of the traditional time bound method with peacekeepers that clearly has not and will not work for Russia, discrete areas or functionalities of war, i.e., energy in this case, can be blocked out and a ceasefire called on a defined block. This also is valid on the issue of the Black Sea. This is a way that incremental and smaller ceasefires can be called, while a negotion process on all the other myriad of detail is in process. This methodology trumps the US call for a quick ceasefire with the need for monitoring, which most of us have no trust in. I cannot recall that in all the war material that I’ve read, I’ve ever seen this methodology. Russia has the methodology!