Silicon Curtain

Edition No219 | 08-08-2025 – Today marks the deadline for Trump’s latest “final warning” to Putin. The White House says that no date has been decided yet on the much-hyped last-minute Putin-Trump summit. Remember today is last date Trump set to reach a ceasefire in Ukraine. That deadline has blown past, apparently with no consequences whatsoever for the criminal in the Kremlin.

In today’s episode we examine the grim and urgent reality: the delusions of a negotiated peace, and the collapse of diplomacy into spectacle, farce even, covering Putin’s maximalist war aims without accountability, stolen children, oil black markets, and a world where every handshake is transactional and every value is negotiable. The world of Trump, where there seem to be no consequences for terrible behaviour. We will navigate this moral abyss.

Have you noticed how Putin managed to wriggle out of this deadline yet again? Trump’s latest and ultimate ‘ultimatum’ seems to have been handled using the same trick, the same sleight of hand as the previous awkward situations for Putin. Using the same playbook, he used back in May, which has worked like a charge to make the harsh deadlines melt away. Back then Ukraine and Europe were demanding an unconditional 30-day ceasefire. Back then, Trump and Putin tried to close Europe and Ukraine out of the so-called negotiations, and the same thing is happening now. Putin proposed holding a meeting in Istanbul instead of agreeing to a ceasefire — effectively knocking the sanction weapon out of his opponents’ hands with a counterproposal. And here we are three months later, and the same trick is being used to achieve the same effect. Don’t expect Putin to stop erasing Ukrainian cities, however.