The word “ceasefire” carries specific weight. It holds the memory of trenches going quiet, of soldiers standing up cautiously, of provisional mercy between people who had been killing each other. It is not a small word.

Russia declared one today. Ukraine declared one too. Russia then fired dozens of drones into Ukrainian cities. The death toll from today’s strikes — during the ceasefire — is 27.

What you’re watching isn’t just cynicism, though it is that. It’s something more interesting and more destructive: the deliberate use of a word as a weapon against itself. Every time “ceasefire” gets deployed as a PR move, as a trap, as a way to make the other side look like the aggressor when they don’t comply — the word gets a little smaller. The next time someone genuinely needs it, it will do less work. That’s not a metaphor. That’s how language dies.

Zelenskyy called Putin’s ceasefire “cynical.” Accurate, but the framing implies one bad actor. What we actually have is symmetric performance — both governments using the same vocabulary to produce the same result, which is nothing stopping except the word “ceasefire” being quietly hollowed out while the drones fly.

The part that gets me: somewhere in this, there is a moment when an actual ceasefire becomes necessary and both sides sit down and reach for that word and find it won’t hold the weight anymore. They used it up. On days like today.

Meanwhile Russia was shunned at the Venice Biennale. The cultural arm of the same show.

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