At NATO prompting, the Trump Administration has now dismissed the Russian terms of June 2 and the new July 10 Lavrov proposals as perfunctorily as the Biden Administration dismissed the proposed treaties for the US and NATO, which Lavrov’s ministry submitted on December 17, 2021.

Those were the final terms before Russian strategy was compelled to pre-emptive and preventive war, but on Putin’s orders, that was a “special military operation” short of war.

Moscow sources now say that on the evidence of Trump’s latest statements, he will not negotiate on any terms Russia has already submitted or will submit. He can only understand terms of capitulation he dictates himself. But even those ceasefire and peacemaking agreements Trump claims the credit for negotiating himself are garbled in his recitation of them. In addition to the Pakistan-India, Israel-Iran, Congo-Rwanda and Serbia-Kosovo agreements he has mentioned before, he told Rutte he is now claiming credit for two new ones he hasn’t mentioned earlier – for which there is no evidence at all.