France’s President Macron, Germany’s Chancellor Merz, and Great Britain’s Prime Minister Starmer, together with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk, traveled to Kiev to meet with failed comedian and acting president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They tried, unsuccessfully, to upstage the Victory Day celebrations for the 80th anniversary of the defeat of fascism occurring throughout Russia and other nations. They may have hoped to divert attention from coverage of the events in Moscow, or to change the subject by proposing a “Monday morning 30-day ceasefire, or else!!” Few, least of all the Russians, made the mistake of taking them seriously.
For example, Merz, having just squeezed through in election as German Chancellor, announced that he would call Russian President Putin to ask him to accept a 30-day ceasefire. At the same time, he proposed that Putin would also have to be tried for war crimes. As American commentator Lt. Col. Danny Davis said: “They’re putting conditions, even on the talks, that they know that the Russian side will never agree to. Merz, the new Chancellor for Germany, was the most acidic.… [H]e said that any kind of end-of-war negotiations will have to include a war crimes tribunal for Putin. Now, what head of state wouldn’t just embrace the heck out of that? Yes, from a position of strength, I’m going to say, ‘sure, we’ll have end-of-war negotiations on terms you set, that are beneficial to you, and that will include me on the docket after the war is over.’”
