I'm John Batser with Bill Rajo, my senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy,

who helps me as my colleague and co-host, my senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy,

who helps me as my colleague and co-host, as we work through the wars of Eurasia.

We go now to Ukraine, used to dominate the headlines, but now with the tangle at the Strait of our moves,

it is still dominant for the arena of Europe, but it is not clear that the U.S. and other interested parties right now have the focus to look to the Russian depredations. Most recently, Mr. Putin,

I believe, announced or proposed a ceasefire for Orthodox Easter, which was this last

weekend. The Roman Catholic Easter was the weekend before and then the Orthodox Easter.

And more than half, I believe, or a significant portion of Ukraine is Orthodox Catholic.

And all of Russia is.

The Roman Catholic part of Ukraine, my memory, is used to be on the western side, which remains firmly in Keith's hands.

John, a very good evening to you.

Right now, the headlines that the Reuters indicate that both sides are accusing each other of violating ceasefire. I'm certain Russia did. What did they shoot at, John? Good evening to you.

Hey, Bill. John, thanks for having me on. So this ceasefire, to me, echoed similar moves last year by Putin.

If you recall, last Easter, Orthodox Easter, and around the Russian Victory Day 8th anniversary in May, Putin announced kind of brief trusses commemorating those events.

I think his likely motivation there was to kind of portray Russia as a good faith actor, ready for peace, and then also create the chance to demonize

Ukraine, accusing them of ceasefire violations. President Trump is likely the chief intended audience

for those messages. And I think you probably have

very similar motivations this time around. Much like last year the Ukrainians reported kind of

a dip in Russian activity. I think if you look at the general staff, Ukrainian general staff

report from 2200 April 12th,

they basically said, I'm paraphrasing here that the Russians generally adhered to the ceasefire,

but there were some violations.

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