Just when the Financial Times was reporting on progress in the ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine, there was heartbreaking news of a direct hit on the theater in Mariupol, where hundreds of women and children were hiding.
It is said that it is always darkest before dawn, but in the case of Ukraine it seems that the sun's rays refuse to hurt at this point.
The Russian army, which has suffered casualties in equipment and equipment, continues to strike at Ukrainians in the north, east and south.
Most of the damage in recent days has been to civilian targets - it seems that the bank of military targets that Russian forces brought from home has already been emptied, and now what is left for them is to empty the cartridge over residences and theater halls.
Hunger is raising its head in Ukraine, where the horrors of "Holodomor" have not yet been forgotten - a mass famine that befell Ukraine in the early 1930s following a predatory economic policy of the Soviet government.
Citizens continue to flee for their lives - to them the talk of a ceasefire seems at the moment like a mirage, a seductive but tormenting illusion.
Is there really any news about the success of an outline for the ceasefire of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is trying to mediate between Moscow and Kyiv?
Documentation: A theater in Mariupol where hundreds of civilians hid was bombed in a Russian attack // From the telegram channel "Mariupol Now"
Mikhail Podolyak, head of the Ukrainian negotiating team, wrote on his Twitter account that the outline published in the Financial Times shows only the Russian position on the matter, while the Ukrainians have many objections and objections about it. Ukraine's official promise not to join NATO, Western security guarantees for Ukraine, possibly Ukrainian recognition of Crimean Russian sovereignty, and of course a ceasefire and withdrawal of Russian forces.
There is no doubt that most of these clauses could have been achieved even without a brutal war, which had already left thousands of civilians and soldiers dead and scorched earth in the cities of Ukraine.
It can also be assumed that such an outline, or one similar to it with such and other amendments, would be acceptable to the Ukrainian side.
But the question is whether Moscow, which has set itself the goal of getting rid of the Zalanski government and turning Ukraine into a satellite country similar to Belarus, will be content with that?
Russian diplomacy lost its credibility long before the current war, and any discourse on the ceasefire and this or that outline must be treated with very limited bail.
It is possible that due to the losses and failures on the ground, Moscow has slightly changed their roadmap for political and military change in Ukraine.
In the short term, if Russia accepts such an outline, it will actually acknowledge the failure of its "special military operation" in Ukraine.
There is no way to present it as a victory at home.
But if the talks continue for a long time and the cities of Ukraine continue to be erased from the map, the economy collapses and a few million more leave their country, the damage to this country will be much more severe.
It will inevitably become a failing state.
In that case, the ceasefire would reach Russia's terms, after it crushed the population and made Ukraine Syria's twin sister in the civil war, and that essentially emptied any compromise proposal out of its content.
So it is not only the content of this or that outline that determines, but of course the small print in it and the pace of the conversations in question.
With each passing day Ukraine is bleeding profusely, even as its troops continue to fight with extraordinary heroism.
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