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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm

Oskredminton and I'm joined by Katie Balls and Mark Galiotti, who heads up the

consultancy Mayak Intelligence. Now, last night, there was a huge breakthrough in Ukraine peace talks,

with Zelensky accepting a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire and putting, quote, the ball in Putin's

court, according to Marco Rubio. Now, Mark, you ask a very probing question on coffee house today,

which is, have Ukraine called Putin's bluff? Yeah, you see, up to now, the Russians have

quite slyly been able to present Zelensky as the villain of the peace, the one who doesn't

want to see any kind of meaningful progress,

and, you know, a Trump administration that anyway was, for various personal reasons,

happy to also see Zelensky in that role, went along with it. Now, though, although it

seemed quite likely that the Ukrainian delegation didn't go to the talks in Jeddah intending to

agree to this particular ceasefire. They had a much, much more limited one in mind. They have,

for whatever reason, chosen to simply accept, roll over and acknowledge that when it comes down

to it, they can't really deny Trump what he wants, especially after a week of turning the screws

...