Vlad Education

Volodymyr Zelensky
Zelensky’s new strategy, after the Oval Office dust-up of late February, reflects his own understanding of the potential for mutual destruction in the Trump-Putin relationship, which looks a lot like the fable of the scorpion and the frog. Photo: Maksym Polishchuk/Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images
Julia Ioffe
March 20, 2025

On Tuesday, President Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin to offer him what the Ukrainians had agreed to in Jeddah: an unconditional 30-day ceasefire. After making Trump wait for an hour, in classic Putin fashion, the Russian president rejected the offer. Instead, he parried with a conditional ceasefire, limited only to energy infrastructure. One person joked to me this was essentially, “Yes in theory, but no in practice.” Trump, determined to spin this as a win, got on the horn with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and offered him the whittled-down ceasefire. Zelensky agreed, and Trump had two more perfect phone calls on the books. Given his statements, he seemed to believe an end to the war was in sight.