Same old same old

Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on the PBS NewsHour tonight:

“What we saw just now is that Vladimir Putin stuck to his guns. That is the same Vladimir Putin who has been saying that Ukraine’s not a real country. He repeated that point today.

“It’s the same Vladimir Putin who said that the war will only end if the ‘root causes’ are addressed, which is code for the U.S. and NATO security presence in Europe. It’s code for cooperation between Western countries and Ukraine. It’s a denial of Ukraine’s legitimacy to exist.

“It’s the same Vladimir Putin who has been stringing Donald Trump all along.

“They alluded to some kind of deal that they’re at least going to shop to the Ukrainians and the Europeans. But we’ll see what the elements of that are. Last week’s Russian proposal was a sham. And we’ll see if this deal survives close scrutiny.”

[My transcription and paragraphing. I’ve added quotation marks for the air quotes that enclosed “root causes.” Andrew Weiss is the writer of a graphic biography, Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin, with art by Brian “Box” Brown.]