White House announces Ukraine's third cease-fire this month, one day after the second died in missiles over Kyiv.

…(cont) The second death came eleven days later, dressed up more formally — a sanctions waiver, a prisoner release, a diesel deal the Czech president called "so close" to delivering a real pause in the fighting, with both sides agreeing in principle to resume talks. Hours after that agreement, Russia hit Kyiv's power grid with missiles anyway. The diesel deal did not fail quietly; it failed on schedule, the way the first one did, the way the pattern now expects.

This morning, the format repeats a third time. The White House says the First Lady has personally secured a localized truce for Oleshky, a city under Russian occupation where residents have been eating garden weeds to survive, set to begin October 29. Neither Ukraine nor Russia has confirmed it. This one has not died yet. It also has not been born yet — it does not start for six more days, which is six more days for the previous pattern to repeat itself before the balloons go up.

Ceasefire is survived by the press release, its next of kin, who inherits the word whole and intact every time the thing it names does not happen. It is preceded in death by the ceasefire of October 11 and the truce of October 22, both of whom it resembles closely enough to be mistaken for at the viewing. The whippersnapper optimism of "effective immediately" has given way, twice now, to the older, more honest phrasing of wartime communiqués: "ongoing."

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that reporters stop printing the word "ceasefire" in a headline until someone can confirm it happened, and start printing the date it ended right beside the date it began.