Earlier both sides [Russia and Ukraine] said the other had continued to attack their positions and Moscow's mayor said the city had been targeted by drones overnight.Anatol Lieven discusses the state of affairs with the wars in Ukraine and Iran. (2)
In his post Trump said he had personally requested the three-day truce and "I very much appreciate its agreement by President Vladimir Putin and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy".
Putin had announced a ceasefire for 8-9 May ahead of Victory Day celebrations on Saturday. Kyiv had earlier called for an indefinite truce, starting 6 May.
Russia has warned Ukraine not to try to attack the Victory Day parade in Red Square.
Its defence ministry has threatened to launch a "retaliatory, massive missile strike" on the centre of Kyiv if Moscow is attacked. It has warned foreign diplomats to leave the Ukrainian capital ahead of 9 May. (1)
The US has really been suffering from a lack of adequate diplomacy and strategic policy. It’s hard not to imagine that the Biden Administration couldn’t have made more active efforts to achieve a stable ceasefire of some kind in Ukraine. That war has been going on longer than the German-Soviet war of 1941-1945. Ukraine successfully resisted the initial Russian push toward their capital Kiev in early 2022. But their 2023 counteroffensive stalled out. And we’ve been seeing a war of attrition between Russia and Ukraine ever since. In theory, Russia is better positioned to win a war of attrition than Ukraine. But four years of continuous war is a long time. Lieven notes that the US is still providing intelligence to Ukraine.
My assumption is that any near-term cessation of the war, whether it’s an extended ceasefire or a Korea-style armistice, would leave Russia still in control of more-or-less what they have now, i.e., Crimea, the Luhansk Oblast (state/province), and parts of the Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Donetsk Oblasts. The Institute for the Study of War provides this map of the situation as of May 6:
The portion of Donetsk still controlled by Ukraine is particularly important, because there are fortified areas there that would be important in resisting any new Russian thrust toward Kiev. Lieven in the interview above notes that Russia is still putting a strong emphasis on the importance of taking all of Donbas, i.e., Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.
Korea and China-Taiwan are two important examples of long-term, unresolved conflicts that have been stable for decades. But they are also not resolved. Another case is Argentina and the Falklands/Malvinas occupied by Britain since the early part of the 19th century. The UN considers the latter an unresolved colonial issue. We could also include British-controlled Gibraltar whose status Spain still disputes. And Türkiye still controls part of the island nation of Cyprus, which has been unresolved really since 1974.
But here is where the current US incapacity under the Trump 2.0 regime to conduct normal diplomacy. Because Russia would surely insist on a US buy-in of some kind on any such armistice arrangement, which would have to cover demarcation lines for troops on both sides, the return of Ukrainian children kidnapped and sent to Russia, international sanctions, stationing of foreign troops in Ukraine, clearance of land mines, and reconstruction plans, and Ukraine’s formal affiliation to the EU and to NATO. The status of Crimea is especially complicated. There’s no question that in international law that Crimea belongs to Ukraine. But Russia also has their key base for their Black Sea fleet there. Those are very complicated issues, which would require a serious strategic vision and competent diplomacy on the American side.
John Mearsheimer recently noted, with particular reference to the Iran War:
[I]t’s hard for me to imagine the United States and Iran reaching a deal on these different issues anytime soon. …The Laurel-and-Hardy team of Jared Kushner and Steve Witcoff are not going to be able to pull off anything like that. The idea of the United States being unable to conduct serious, substantive diplomacy on issues like Ukraine and Iran until 2029 at the earliest is not an encouraging one. As Lieven says in the video, “Who’s to negotiate peace in Ukraine?” He also comments that Laurel and Hardy don’t understand how to negotiate with Iran either.
And then when it comes to negotiations, there are two big problems there. One is the trust issue. Do you think the Iranians trust the United States at this point in time? The last time the two sides were negotiating, we all of a sudden launched a war against Iran. In the middle of the negotiations. Can the Iranians trust the United States?
And then, moreover, do you really think the Trump Administration is really capable for executing a negotiation that leads to a meaningful settlement? This is the gang that can’t shoot straight. They couldn’t settle the war in Ukraine. They can’t end the genocide in Gaza. This is not a highly competent administration that’s filled with top-rate diplomats. Instead they have people like Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff in charge. (3)
And there is no end currently in sight for the US-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon. Which is currently pushing the world toward a global recession.
Gerhard Mangott, a Russia expert from the University of Innsbruck, recently discussed the internal situation in Russia on a podcast for Austria’s Die Presse. The news service provides this summary of part of his presentation:
The dissatisfaction with Putin – among the people as well as among the elite – is not homogeneous, but rather it comes from completely different sides that had different expectations of him. What does not seem to suit everyone is the economic weakness on the one hand, and the unclear situation in the Ukraine war on the other. And finally, according to Mangott, the dominant position of power of the secret services and the military. What has happened here in recent years is absolute-control mania and repression: "The secret services have free rein." (3)It’s not at all surprising that after four years plus of a war of attrition that there would be irritation and unhappiness over the sacrifices Russians and especially soldiers are being called upon to bear. The chronic optimism by American hawks in the potency of economic sanctions to force countries to bow to American desires is really quite a phenomenon. When countries like Cuba, Iran, Iraq and Russia see their national interests and the survival of their regimes at risk if they given in to sanctions, they have shown a great ability to sacrifice and adapt.
But optimistic hawks have been predicting Russia’s economic collapse since the current war began in early 2022. It hasn’t happened yet. And Russia, which is still a petrostate, is getting a direct boost from the higher oil prices resulting from the US-Israel war on Iran. The Trump regime even relaxed the sanctions aimed at preventing Russia from selling oil after Iran asserted greater control over the Strait of Hormuz shipping route.
Another obsession of US Russia hawks is the idea that the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was “the Soviet Union’s Vietnam,” in the hopeful thinking of neocons. That plausible enough if we completely ignore Russia’s economic problems, much of which had to do with their dependency of oil sales and thus their vulnerability to oil price swings, their inability to modernize their industry fast enough, and the economic burden of maintain the economies of the Warsaw Pact states. Mikhail Gorbachev was the Soviet leader who accepted de facto defeat and withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan. But it wouldn’t fit easily into the neocon narrative to say the USSR fell because citizens were so outraged at Gorbachev’s failure to continue that war.
I’m still convinced that part of the strategic thinking of both the US and the European allies on Ukraine was this was a war that would severely weaken Russia and was therefore something that would benefit them geopolitically. And, as a practical matter, it has meant heavy costs for Russia. But it has been over four years in which the Russian army has gained a lot of combat experience. Much more so than the US or EU nations have accumulated recently.
With wars and tangled diplomatic situations, the superficially banal observation that several things can be true at once is particularly important to keep in mind. NATO’s diplomacy toward Russia over the question of expanding it to include Ukraine was reckless. And it was illegal and unnecessary for Russia to seize Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, to subsidize and arm pro-Russia rebels in the Donbass (along with direct Russian participation) from that point on, and invading Ukraine and occupying their territory since 2022. It’s certainly questionable what much advantage Ukraine has gained by its direct attacks on Russian territory but it is completely legitimate to attack the invading country.
It’s true that Ukraine stands for the defense of liberal democracy. It’s also the case that the widely used V-Dem think tank ratings currently describe both Ukraine and Russia as of 2025 as “electoral autocracies.” Belarus, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are all in the lower category of "closed autocracies." (5)
Wars and other forms of politics can be complicated and confusing …
Notes:
(1) Greenall, Robert (2026): Trump says Russia and Ukraine to observe three-day ceasefire. BBC News 05/08/2026. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c202zn5gg0lo> (Accessed: 2026-08-05).
(2) Anatol Lieven - Russia, Iran, Europe, and the Remaking of World Order. Armenian News Network-Groong Podcast 05/08/2026. <https://youtu.be/bnwKcnMSZTk?si=3zPCd-qMsnYTgMKy> (Accessed: 2026-08-05).
(3) 'IRAN WILL NOT SURRENDER' – TRUMP STUCK IN A LOSING WAR WITH NO OFF-RAMP. Rachel Blevins YouTube channel 05/09/2026. (14:00ff in the video) <https://youtu.be/5Do9bE1gMxk?si=upRcR3aTokHd5sGm> (Accessed: 2026-09-05).
(4) „Putin ist in seiner Elite angeschlagen“, sagt Experte Mangott: „Die Geheimdienste haben Narrenfreiheit“. Die Presse n/d (05/08/2026?). <https://www.diepresse.com/22329933/putin-ist-in-seiner-elite-angeschlagen-sagt-experte-mangott-die-haben> (Accessed: 2026-09-05). My translation to English.
(5) V-Dem Democracy Report 2026, p. 15. <https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy_Report_2026_lowres.pdf>
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