Analysis

It is an inevitable right of passage in Washington: every outgoing administration’s senior officials have a chance to shake off the loss, find a golden sinecure, and then start crafting the narrative that they prefer, rather than the history that exists.

Doug Macgregor talks with the Deep Dive podcast on Trump’s delusions of leverage over Russia.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia and Ukraine will “immediately” begin ceasefire negotiations, President Donald Trump said Monday after separate calls with the leaders of both countries meant to spur progress toward ending the three-year war. The conversations did not appear to yield a major breakthrough.

Theodore Roosevelt said: “Speak softly but carry a large stick.” European leaders are doing the opposite yet offended when not invited to Russo-Ukraine negotiations. Instead, and from the side lines, Europeans have been insisting that Russia accepts ceasefire conditions that neither they nor the Americans have the political or the military means to impose. So, it’s no surprise that Russians continue patiently to insist on their own conditions, nor that Americans may be slowly coming round to Russia’s position. Yet European leaders are affronted. Why?

President Donald Trump announced he’ll be speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin — and then with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shortly after — as he looks to broker a deal to end the war in Ukraine.

Hall Gardner is emeritus professor of international politics at the American University of Paris. This is the first of a two-part series by Gardner on the project of NATO enlargement…

The critics of NATO enlargement were correct. NATO enlargement would provoke a dangerous Russian backlash, a new high-tech arms race, a Sino-Russian strategic partnership―plus a loss of Allied consensus that could undermine transatlantic trust.

The idea of “civilizationism” has become a key part both of the Russian establishment’s image of Russia and of Russia’s diplomatic and intellectual outreach to the “Global South”. It helps to explain why so many countries around the world have refused to join the West in imposing sanctions on Russia in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Broadly speaking, civilizationism rejects the view that Western liberal capitalist democracy represents the “end of history” and a goal to which all countries should and indeed must aspire. Drawing on deep roots in history and philosophy (European and Asian as well as Russian), civilizationism argues for a plurality of civilizations, all of which have contributions to make to human development and world order.

To discuss these issues, Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute, was joined by Professor Paul Robinson, a leading expert on Russian thought and author of Russia’s World Order: How Civilizationism Explains the Conflict with the West, published in April 2025 by Cornell University Press.

Putin’s apparent rejection of Zelensky’s challenge to a face to face meeting is a disappointment, but not a crucial setback. It is very rare for real progress in peace talks to be made in meetings between leaders themselves, and the Russians have some reason to see this as a maneuver, or stunt, by Zelensky to gain Trump’s favor rather than a serious proposal.

In Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump faces a crafty, experienced adversary who hopes to capitalize on the American president’s impatience with the war to coerce Ukraine into signing away what the Russians have failed to win by force on the battlefield.

The following Memorandum is presented as a brief review, based on experience, aiming to encourage well-informed discourse between the United States and Russia on the critical issue of arms control. The experience of the past half-century has taught us much. We suggest that arms control agreements between the U.S. and Russia need to be founded upon three basic principles: security, stability, and reciprocity.

Kagan writes: Vladimir, STOP!” That Truth Social post by President Donald Trump put a fitting capstone on one of the least successful negotiations in recent memory.

As will become clear, it isn’t the fact that the negotiations were unsuccessful that rankles Kagan; it is the fact that there were any negotiations at all. There is no bigger sin in the eyes of Kagan and his fellow neocons than attempts to solve diplomatically what could otherwise be solved by bloodshed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed restarting direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on May 15, “without preconditions,” an offer that came in response to Ukraine and its allies urging Moscow to commit to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire or face additional sanctions.

with Ukraine.

Putin’s proposal came after leaders from four major European countries threatened to ratchet up pressure on Moscow if it does not accept an unconditional 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine that they offered on Saturday in a strong show of unity with Kyiv.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping held bilateral meetings in Moscow, emphasizing an alliance they claim will create a multipolar world order. Xi’s four-day trip to Moscow started on Wednesday and coincides with Russia’s 80th-anniversary commemorations of the end of World War II.

How justified have been the fears of Russian expansion and to what extent has Russophobia been used to justify rearmament programs? Russia in the 19th century was undoubtedly an autocracy, but it sought “weak neighbours” rather than conquest. The British and Americans saw the Cold War as an ideological battle between democracy and totalitarianism, whereas the Soviets, with the experience of two invasions from Germany, were mainly interested in establishing buffers in Eastern Europe against what Stalin believed would be an inevitable American-led assault.

Ben Cohen moved to Vermont in 1977 and co-founded the world’s most liberal ice cream company. You may think you disagree with him on everything. But take a second and hear him out on the Ukraine war.

To mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day, ACURA hosted a panel discussion featuring Anatol Lieven of The Quincy Institute in Washington, Mary Dejevsky, the foreign affairs columnist for the Independent newspaper in London, and Sevim Dağdelen, a former German MdB who joined the conversation from Berlin. The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel welcomed the panel which was moderated by the journalist James W. Carden.

NonZero’s Robert Wright talks to ACURA member and Quincy Institute Eurasian Affairs Director Anatol Lieven. They tackle questions such as: Which side wants peace more?–and why hasn’t Trump used his leverage?

Professor Edward Lozansky, President of the American University in Moscow and founder of (among much else) of Russia House in Washington, who died in Washington on April 30 at the age 84.