PUTIN’S PAUSE: With the failure of a U.N. call for a 30-day ceasefire in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a daily five-hour pause in the fighting to give time for civilians to evacuate before the bombs and shells start falling again in eastern Ghouta. The pause, which  has just ended for today, seemed to mostly hold, but few people appear to be taking advantage of a so-called humanitarian corridor to leave the beleaguered area. That’s probably because in the past, evacuation routes have been shelled and didn’t offer any real guarantee of safe passage. But the fact that the pause largely held, notwithstanding some sporadic shelling, shows it’s Putin, not his client Bashar Assad, who is calling the shots in Syria.

The U.S. continues to condemn the Russian-backed Syrian offensive against the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, which since last week has killed nearly 500 people and wounded another 1,500, according to humanitarian monitoring groups. At the Pentagon yesterday, a spokesman confirmed the U.S. military remains focused on fighting the Islamic State in the eastern part of the country, and has no role in implementing the ceasefire or enforcing “deconfliction” zones designated by Russia.