A Stalemate
- Vladimir Pastukhov
- 23.06.2026, 10:05
It's zugzwang in both cases.
I find comments marked “urgent” particularly amusing: “Completely out of the blue, Lebanon has become the central topic of the negotiations between Iran and the U.S. in Switzerland.” That really is straight out of Chernomyrdin’s playbook: it’s never happened before, and here we go again…
The irony of history is that two negotiation processes crucial to the world’s future—on the war in Ukraine and the war in the Middle East—have reached the exact same impasse. Russia is demanding that Trump deal with Ukraine and force Zelenskyy to withdraw from Donbas, while Iran is demanding that Trump deal with Israel and force Netanyahu to withdraw from Lebanon. And it seems that not everyone owes America something, as planned, but rather America owes something to everyone: to some, the “Spirit of Anchorage,” and to others, the “Spirit of Versailles.”
But things aren’t exactly “rosy” for Russia and Iran either. Russia has a nuclear bomb, but it cannot use it because it fears that China will respond by cutting off oil exports along Putin’s “lifeline” from Siberia to China. Iran has the Strait of Hormuz, but it cannot close it from the inside to others because Trump has halted its own oil exports by blocking the strait from the outside. It’s zugzwang in both cases.
Trump himself is just as indifferent to the fate of the Donbas “stump”—which Moscow is demanding be handed over—as he is to the fate of the buffer zone in Lebanon, which Tehran is demanding be handed over. But both Zelenskyy and Netanyahu refuse to make concessions in negotiations to which they are not a party. True, there is one significant difference: over the course of the play, Zelenskyy has found Europe for himself, while Netanyahu has lost it. Therefore, paradoxically, Israel is now more vulnerable than Ukraine—it is easier to put pressure on it from Washington.
At the same time, Moscow and Tehran are united in their categorical opposition to any direct negotiations with Ukraine and Israel, respectively. The Kremlin refuses to recognize Zelenskyy’s legitimacy or Ukraine’s right to exist as a subject of international law. Iran has never recognized such a right for Israel at all. Apparently, this is precisely the track that has led the entire process into a dead end.
The reasons are obvious. Ukraine is the main obstacle to Russian dominance in Eastern Europe, while Israel is the main obstacle to Iranian dominance in the Middle East. Trump cannot allow either of these scenarios, so he cannot simply “abandon” Ukraine and Israel—in both the literal and figurative senses of the word—and is forced to continue an endless political experiment in crossbreeding a hedgehog and a viper, dragging both sides into making concessions where concessions are practically impossible. So far, it’s not going so well.
Unfortunately, the issue of Lebanon, like that of Donbas, is not an annoying pimple in an inconvenient spot that can be removed with a little plastic surgery after a brief grimace, but a genuine diplomatic melanoma that cannot simply be “cut out and forgotten.”
The very fact that such a paradoxical political parallel has emerged in two conflicts so different in nature speaks to the systemic nature of the problem. But if we ask ourselves—what exactly unites these conflicts into a system?—the inevitable answer is: the collapse of the American dream that the U.S. can be “great again.”
The situation reached a stalemate when it became clear that America is no longer prepared to truly wage war. You don’t treat tumors with a quack’s spells. If America were truly “great again,” no one would dare pressure it into pressuring its proxies. But today, when only a child is unaware that “Trump always backs down,” no one will bow to him.
Alas, no one today believes that Trump is capable of anything more than telling everyone to “go to hell.” And reputation is more valuable than money, because in politics, perception is everything, and reality is nothing. For anything to change, Trump needs to make those around him believe that he is capable of more. The only association that comes to mind in this regard is the key tagline from Guy Ritchie’s cult film *The Gentlemen*: “To become the king of the beasts, it’s not enough to act like a king. You have to be a king.”
Vladimir Pastukhov, “Telegram”