Pushing papers, telling jokes In the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Roman Abramovich and his team hoped for a peaceful resolution. Then Bucha changed everything. — Meduza

Podolyak told Meduza that Russian negotiators, when asked about retreating further from their positions, would respond that they intended not to retreat but to advance. “This was remarkable,” says Podolyak. “It was as if they were saying, ‘We cannot capture these cities, so you must just give them to us.’”
— Read on meduza.io/en/feature/2023/02/18/pushing-papers-telling-jokes