Clever Putin keeps Trump hanging on the telephone

Donald Trump has signalled that the US would help, a bit, in “security guarantees” as part of a land for peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. And Kyiv would need it — the land the Kremlin wants is Ukraine’s best laid defence.

- SAM KILEY

Handing a vast chunk of the Donetsk Oblast province to Russia when Moscow currently controls about 70 per cent - would hand Vladimir Putin some of Ukraine's finest redoubts and most doubty defenders.

It would include thousands of miles of pre-prepared trenches, tank traps that snake across the rolling landscape, pre-prepared ambush positions - a modern Maginot Line.

Britain's ministry of defence has estimated that it would take Russia “4.4 years” and nearly 2 million casualties to take the four provinces it has claimed.

An agreement to freeze the frontline where they are, but for Russia to settle for the land it has taken plus the Donetsk bonus, will probably save them a couple of years fighting. If the battle for Bakhmut is an indication of how hard won Russian advances are then a pause in the killing is a huge result for Putin who has lost 60,000 there.