By Stephen Blank
April 28, 2025
19fortyfive
Russian President Vladimir Putin has just played his latest trick. On April 28, he suddenly announced a unilateral three-day truce in fighting in Ukraine to extend from May 8-10.
Ostensibly, this truce is supposed to be in honor of VE day, which Russia celebrates on May 9 as the anniversary of the German surrender to the Allies in World War II (the formal surrender occurred after midnight on May 9, according to Moscow time).
This annual celebration is the grandest of all Russian military holidays and has been made by Putin into one of his most pageant-like propaganda platforms. Therefore, it makes a plausible opportunity for a truce, although that has not been the case during the rest of the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
What Is Putin Doing?
However, the real purpose of this sudden truce announcement is to throw sand into President Trump’s eyes, and the fact that Putin has now played this trick reflects both his concern that Trump might walk away from the table before Putin can cash his chips as well as his contempt for Trump’s intelligence. The reason for Putin playing this trick now is obvious. Trump’s threats that America may walk away from efforts to impose a pro-Russian peace on Ukraine if the fighting does not stop means that Putin cannot pocket the gains that Trump’s impatience and ignorance of the issues involved here has led him to give Putin.
These concessions are recognition de jure of Crimea as Russia even though this violates 90 years of American diplomacy and international law that does not recognize territory seized by force: de facto recognition of the four provinces, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Donetsk, as Russian even though Russia has failed to capture all of this territory. Ukraine will be barred from NATO membership and receive no security guarantee from Washington. US sanctions on Russia will be lifted, leading to bilateral economic cooperation between Moscow and Washington.
Apart from the fact that they give nothing to Ukraine, these proposals and the fact that there is no peacekeeping for or security guarantee given to Ukraine, these concessions amount to a second Munich Agreement where the great powers negotiate over the head of a smaller victim and dismember it with the gravest of consequences for international security. Indeed, it is already clear that few, if any, European peacekeepers will arrive in Ukraine due to Russian threats.
By continuing to bomb civilian targets and by violating his own self-proclaimed Easter truce, Putin jeopardized his standing with Trump, who is clearly unhappy with his behavior. Trump’s positive meeting with Ukrainian president Zelensky at the funeral of Pope Francis also might signify a turn in Trump’s attitude. Indeed, Trump typically is now threatening new sanctions on Russia. Hence Putin’s sudden announcement of a unilateral VE day truce.
Obviously, he thinks this announcement will lead Trump to restore the concessions that are almost there for the taking. There is and should be little doubt about this gesture’s sincerity or purpose, not to speak of Putin’s willingness to resume negotiations. And the fact that Putin proclaimed this truce with these purposes in mind speaks volumes about his estimation of Trump’s fitness to defend Western interests.
Already, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is telling foreign audiences that not only is Crimea a “done deal” because Russia does not negotiate over its own territory, but international recognition of Russia’s control over the four aforementioned provinces that Moscow has occupied is a precondition for peace talks.
Thus, Putin clearly will not negotiate in good faith and expects priori rewards for his aggression. Typically, Moscow insists on retaining the fruits of aggression even before the negotiations for peace begin.
Putin may hold this position because he thinks he is winning, and many Western audiences, including in Washington, believe that there is no way Ukraine can win. Yet Russia could not sustain the war without the massive aid it gets from China, Iran, and North Korea.
Moreover, the Russian economy itself is under great and probably growing stress. Putin has admitted that despite its militarization, Russia’s defense industry suffers from gaps. Furthermore, its economy now relies on China without which it could not finance the war and upon a mounting off-budget debt that is putting its credit standing and the overall economy at risk.
What Happens Next?
In other words, given Ukraine’s own resilience, mounting European support for Ukraine’s war effort, and a consistent flow of US military and intelligence support plus rigorous sanctions on Russia and secondary sanctions upon its supporters, the US could force Putin to engage directly with Ukraine in negotiations, uphold Ukrainian and European security, defeat China’s ally, establish lasting energy markets for the US and Europe, and safeguard not only NATO but international security.
This truce, however, merely masks Putin’s ongoing greed for empire and contempt for the US and Trump.
Giving Russia all it wants, undermining Ukraine, Europe, and international security is not a peace with honor nor is it peace. Instead, it essentially guarantees further wars in Europe and elsewhere.
The administration may pretend to itself and others that it is making peace, but here, as in other examples, “Gentlemen cry peace, but there is no peace.”
Dr. Stephen J. Blank is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program. He has published over 900 articles and monographs on Soviet/Russian, U.S., Asian, and European military and foreign policies, testified frequently before Congress on
Russia, China, and Central Asia, consulted for the Central Intelligence Agency, major think tanks and foundations, chaired major international conferences in the US and in Florence; Prague; and London, and has been a commentator on foreign affairs in the media in the US and abroad. He has also advised major corporations on investing in Russia and is a consultant for the Gerson Lehrmann Group. He is the author of Russo-Chinese Energy Relations: Politics in Command (London: Global Markets Briefing, 2006), and Natural Allies? Regional Security in Asia and Prospects for Indo-American Strategic Cooperation (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2005). Dr. Blank is also the author of The Sorcerer as Apprentice: Stalin’s Commissariat of Nationalities (Greenwood, 1994); and the co-editor of The Soviet Military and the Future (Greenwood, 1992).