When Donald Trump announced yesterday that Vladimir Putin had agreed to stop bombing Ukrainian cities for a week, officials in Kyiv were taken aback. Volodymyr Zelensky said there were no direct agreements between Ukraine and Russia to suspend air strikes on critical infrastructure despite the issue being discussed at last week’s peace talks in Abu Dhabi. The Ukrainian President had no idea when this ceasefire was supposed to begin or end – and he wasn’t the only one. The Kremlin, it quickly turned out, didn’t have any idea either. 

The first to start the rumours were outraged pro-Kremlin military bloggers, who began reporting that Moscow had ordered its forces not to strike Ukraine’s energy infrastructure yesterday morning. By the evening, Trump said he had personally called Putin and asked him not to........

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