White House Makes No Meaningful Effort to Begin Cease-fire Negotiations
Donald Trump doubled down on his pro-Russia strategy on Monday, deflecting blame away from Moscow for deadly ballistic missile attacks in Ukraine, while taking no action to ratchet up pressure on the Kremlin to implement the cease-fire the president repeatedly promised on the 2024 campaign trail.
Trump has made normalizing ties with Moscow the centerpiece of his peace plan intended to bring the three-year war to a halt — even as Russia has significantly increased its campaign of drone and missile strikes against civilian targets in Ukraine.
On Sunday, two ballistic missiles struck Sumy, a city in northern Ukraine, killing at least 35 people and injuring dozens. Scenes of carnage from the strike showed bodies slumped in the streets, amid the smoking ruins of destroyed vehicles and shattered buildings. Many of the victims of the first strike were making their way through streets bustling with people celebrating Palm Sunday, a holiday widely observed in Ukraine.
The second ballistic missile, which appears to have been carrying a cluster munitions warhead — designed to maximize casualties among “soft” targets, such as unarmored vehicles and personnel — struck as passersby and emergency workers responded to the first strike.
Deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, but the Russian military has an extensively documented history of carrying out so-called “double-tap” strikes on civilians and first responders in every conflict in which it participates.
