Russian foreign minister offers talks with Biden

The good thing about the reported offer by Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, to have talks with the Biden administration about ending the war in Ukraine is that it shows Putin is now desperate to bring his disastrous "special military operation" to a close to avoid further humiliation. The bad thing is that Putin and Lavrov cannot ever be trusted and all they want is to save face while still hanging on to as much of Ukrainian territory as possible. But that is never going to happen so any talks would be a waste of time. What this is really about is Putin is trying to blame Biden and the US for the war or at least for the continuation of the war and if the US refuses to negotiate with him, he will tell the world that he tried to bring peace but Biden wanted the war to carry on in order to try and destroy Russia. Putin's latest gambit is so transparently false that it should be dismissed. The US State Department has effectively done this. So let's focus on why Putin has come up wkth this offer after seven months of war. He is losing and losing badly and he needs someone else to blame.