this is getting serious when i post three from the same author in a row, but pepe has a way with words that i enjoy and in the process creates word pictures i believe paint a clear picture of his focus;

Putin will never sacrifice Russia’s “indivisibility of security” demands posed to Washington in December 2021 – and met with a no-response response.

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 consummate 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......more.......