INNA BONDARENKO: Putin’s ceasefire was as fake as his grotesque Easter charade in church

By INNA BONDARENKO

Published: 22:48 BST, 20 April 2025 | Updated: 22:48 BST, 20 April 2025

Hours after announcing a unilateral Easter ceasefire in his war of aggression against Ukraine on Saturday, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin attended a service in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

Dressed in a dark suit and tie and holding a lit red candle, the Russian leader ostentatiously crossed himself whenever the celebrant announced: ‘Christ is risen.’

But even as Putin attended to his devotions, the ceasefire – designed to last for a mere 30 hours – was over before it had properly begun.

During the first six hours of the supposed truce, Kyiv reported that Russia launched 19 separate assaults on its forces and fired almost 300 drones.

Naturally, the Kremlin Press machine retorted that Ukraine was the aggressor, because it had fired three times as many drones during the pause – an unverifiable claim and widely believed to be a blatant lie.

During the first six hours of the supposed truce, Kyiv reported that Russia fired 300 drones

Russian president Vladimir Putin attends a service in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Russia has been increasing its forced conscription drive, as footage emerged from a Moscow gym showing police rounding up men

But why announce a ceasefire if – from the outset – you have no intention of honouring it? The answer is obvious to anyone – like me – well-versed in Putin’s disingenuous brand of diplomatic manoeuvres.

For five years, I trained to become a Russian diplomat at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) – a Hogwarts for the foreign policy elite. There, I was drilled in the Kremlin’s long-standing worldview, a pitiless realpolitik in which might is right and truth is whatever you want it to be.

We learned how all Russia’s international negotiations had a single goal: to increase the mother country’s power. This meant pursuing wars that were advantageous, while insisting to the outside world that we sought peace in the face of violence and treachery. But be in no doubt: Putin believes it totally. He is convinced the West despises Russia, and that nothing Europe or the US say can ever be trusted.

He is also a master of making one message suit different audiences.

To ordinary Russians, his Easter charade is reassuring. Despite the horrendous losses incurred by the ‘special military operation’, now three years in and with close to one million dead, the Russian people want to believe Putin is not a warmonger.

His announcement of a ceasefire over the sacred Easter weekend was calculated to dupe them into seeing him as a humanitarian, to give him the moral high ground over an enemy he depicts as ruthless and untrustworthy.

When it comes to the West, the cessation of hostilities was designed to create headlines and sow confusion. Over in Washington, President Trump is only too keen to lay the blame for the fighting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he has accused of ‘starting a war’ against his larger neighbour and demanding American support.

Many in Europe will be left scratching their heads, while in Ukraine Putin’s latest cynical gambit will be seen as yet further proof of Russian’s endless capacity for cruelty.

Every one of these reactions is a win for Putin, according to his own twisted diplomatic rationale.

With my MGIMO training, I can see beyond the truce-that-never-was to the shadowy reshaping of the Kremlin’s negotiating machine.

At the peace deal talks in Saudi Arabia between Russia and the US last month, Putin’s delegation was headed for the first time not by a diplomat but by a former spy chief: General Sergey Beseda, once head of the FSB intelligence network.

It was an intriguing choice, suggesting that talks with the US over how to divide the spoils in Ukraine will no longer be handled by highly trained political operatives but by people who wield real power in the Kremlin.

Might is right, after all. And, amid all the lies, that’s an incontrovertible fact.

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INNA BONDARENKO: Putin’s ceasefire was as fake as his grotesque Easter charade in church

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