THE BALL, so America’s secretary of state said on March 11th, is back in Vladimir Putin’s court. Ukraine had just agreed at talks in Jeddah to an American plan for a month-long ceasefire, and in return America has already restarted the flow of weapons and information that Donald Trump cut off following his spectacular Oval Office clash with Volodymyr Zelensky 11 days earlier. For once, it is Mr Putin who has a fateful decision to make. It is not clear how far America is prepared to go to ensure he comes to the right conclusion.
A ceasefire does not favour Russia. A temporary pause would give Ukraine a chance to resupply and it might endure, because polling suggests that Russians are tired of war. Whichever side resumed fighting first would invite international condemnation and the ire of Mr Trump. A violation would show the American president up as weak and credulous. He would not like that.
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