A quick housekeeping note: I’m still fried. I’ve got (at least) one more long hard day ahead tomorrow, so I’m just going to run through the basics, get cleaned up, and then rack out.
Today was the commemoration for the Soviet genocide of the Crimean Tatars:
🕯️ We commemorate the victims of the Crimean Tatar people who, in 1944, were subjected to genocide carried out by the Soviet Union, with nearly 200,000 Crimean residents forcibly deported.
1/2— Latvian MFA 🇱🇻 | #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 (@latvianmfa.bsky.social) May 18, 2025 at 3:02 AM
2/2
Latvia expresses solidarity with the Crimean Tatar people and strongly condemns the human rights violations committed by Russia in Crimea since its illegal annexation in 2014. #CrimeaIsUkraine 🇺🇦— Latvian MFA 🇱🇻 | #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 (@latvianmfa.bsky.social) May 18, 2025 at 3:02 AM
President Zelenskyy was in Rome and Vatican City today for meetings with Pope Leo and the latter’s inaugural mass. And the VP of a Thousand Last Names.
There’s nothing sweeter than vatnik tears.
— Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@marikamikiashvili.bsky.social) May 18, 2025 at 6:16 PM
I’m Adam L Silverman and I endorse this messsage.
Let’s start with the upcoming Trump-Putin phone call. The Japan Times, republishing from Bloomberg, has the details:
Vladimir Putin believes he has a strong hand ahead of a phone call Monday with Donald Trump and European leaders are trying to prevent the U.S. president from rushing through a deal.
Putin is confident that his forces can break through Ukraine’s defenses by the end of the year to take full control of four regions that he has claimed for Russia, according to a person familiar with the Russian president’s thinking who asked not to named discussing private conversations.
That means the Russian president is unlikely to offer any meaningful concessions to Trump when the two leaders speak and European officials are worried that Trump may try to force through a settlement regardless.
The U.S. president has been pushing for a quick end to a war that is now deep into its fourth year and has backed himself to unlock a deal in a direct conversation with Putin. The Russian leader, for his part, has given no indication that he’s ready to stop fighting as his troops slowly grind forward on the battlefield and that’s fueled concern in Kyiv and other European capitals that Ukraine could be pushed into giving up more ground.
“Unfortunately where we are in the war, you don’t see strong incentives for Russia to agree to a ceasefire,” Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, said at a conference in Tallinn, Estonia, Sunday.
There’s a growing sense that U.S. efforts to impose a ceasefire are culminating and officials in Europe are unsure whether Trump will ramp up pressure on Russia or simply move on to the next challenge if they fail. Trump has promised to brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and some of his NATO allies once he’s finished speaking with his Russian counterpart.
Despite all the talk about ending the fighting, Putin is ready for a protracted war if that is what is required to achieve his goals and he is sanguine about the prospect of further U.S. sanctions, according to two other people close to the Kremlin.
“Trump wants Putin to agree to a truce but he absolutely doesn’t want to,” said Sergei Markov, a political consultant with close ties to the Kremlin. “But Putin isn’t interested in a collapse of the talks. He’s trying to maneuver so that these negotiations continue alongside the military offensive.”
On a call Friday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, France’s Emmanuel Macron and the U.K.’s Keir Starmer tried to make it clear to Trump that Putin has been stringing him along, according to one senior European official. They are hoping that Trump will realize that he risks looking like a loser if he forces a bad deal on Ukraine, the official added.
Zelenskyy was also on the Friday call but he seemed despondent and exhausted by the week’s developments, the official said. Zelenskyy and his European allies believed they had a commitment from Trump to hit the Kremlin with fresh sanctions if Putin refused to observe a ceasefire from last Monday, but that hasn’t materialized.
“Putin has been emboldened by his ability to make maximalist demands of Ukraine without experiencing any serious pushback from the Trump administration,” said Bota Iliyas, a senior analyst at Prism, a strategic intelligence firm in London. “Putin doesn’t trust Trump. But he will push Trump to align with Russia’s vision for a ceasefire.”
Much more at the link.
The only way to change the risk versus reward calculus for Putin is the exact same thing that it has been for the past three years: give Ukraine what it needs to defeat Russia on the battlefield as quickly as possible. Otherwise Putin will use his far greater population to keep trying to exhaust the Ukrainians. A long, grinding, protracted war is not a problem for Putin. Reality has not changed for three years: Putin and Russia are either stopped in Ukraine and pushed back within Russia’s borders or he will threaten all of the former states of the Soviet Union and then the rest of Europe.
Istanbul talks showed Putin aims for a grand diplomatic deal to restore Russian dominance over post-Soviet space, per Sky News.
news.sky.com/story/ukrain…— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) May 18, 2025 at 1:56 PM
More after the jump.
War for Ukraine Day 1,179: Putin Keeps Probing for MushPost + Comments (5)
