“Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness,” the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow said late on August 30, as quoted by the Interfax, TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies. Gorbachev led the Soviet Union from 1985 until its collapse in 1991.

The dissolution of the Soviet bloc marked by Gorbachev’s resignation that year ended the Cold War and years of confrontation between East and West, freed Eastern European nations from Soviet domination, and established the modern Russian state.

Born into a farming family in southern Russia, Gorbachev rose through the ranks of the Communist Party to become general secretary in 1985.

At the age of just 54, and the first leader from the post-Stalin generation, Gorbachev introduced a series of reforms that he hoped would reinvigorate the USSR and address its weaknesses.

Gorbachev won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the Cold War, but many in Russia see him as responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the social and economic crises that enveloped the country in the early 1990s.

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Organised on May 18 each year or around this date, the events and activities planned to celebrate International Museum Day can last a day, a weekend or an entire week.

IMD was celebrated for the first time 40 years ago. All around the world, more and more museums participate in International Museum Day.

Last year, more than 37,000 museums participated in the event in about 158 countries and territories.

The theme for this year’s International Museum Day is “The Power of Museums”.

International Museum Day was established in 1977 with the adoption of a resolution. The resolution was adopted at the ICOM General Assembly held in Moscow, Russia. The day was designated to ‘further unify the creative aspirations and efforts of museums and draw the attention of the world public to their activity’.

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Experts had believed that any war in these times would not last beyond a fortnight. It would be economically disastrous for the aggressor and certainly for the invaded country, they said. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has lasted over 10 weeks now, and shows no signs of slowing down. While Russia has been able to sell its oil through rouble trades with China, India and some other countries enabling a source of national income, the West has been pumping money and arms into Ukraine continuously, even as the war creates millions of refugees.

The very purpose of the war has been defeated, if war strategists are to be believed. War is not a matter of ego. When it is so, the destruction is far more than what bombs and missiles can inflict. According to Sun Tzu, in the Art of War the best general is the one who can avoid war completely in the process of ‘occupying’ a nation. To that extent, China’s economic ‘occupation’ of parts of Sri Lanka, a huge swathe of Pakistan and large areas of countries in the African continent can be ideal situations. Russia, it seems, has fallen into a Western trap and now cannot extricate itself.

Whatever the geopolitics of the situation, the fact is that millions maybe even billions are being blown up in smoke, and the only ones benefiting are those in the war business.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has been rumoured to be undergoing a cancer surgery some say cancer of the stomach and he would probably be transferring the invasion responsibility to a trusted general. Not that this has created too much of a problem, but the very fact that Putin will be out of commission for a few days within this chaos is strange.

Meanwhile, Russia seems to have changed its goal a bit, wanting now to fully cement its governance in areas occupied, ordering rouble trading and more. There are hasty arrangements for referendums in such places and these will come in the way of any peace talk, which has a precondition of Putin giving up already annexed territories.

Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s army keeps being boosted by heavy weapons from the US and its allies which apparently are ways to regain lost territory, but in the long run pushing Ukraine in massive debt.

It has been reported that Moscow is also “seeking to tighten its grip in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, parts of which it has seized. That would leave about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory and most of its coast under Russia’s control and create a land link to Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.”

The situation is complex, and a quick solution seems distant. May 9 is WW-II victory day, but that is unlikely to see any roll down in war activity.

The Kremlin is already consolidating its position in places under its control in Ukraine, especially in the Donbas region, with Sergei Kiriyenko, the deputy chief of staff responsible for domestic politics, visiting the region late last month to lay out his plans with officials there.

According to the US, votes on becoming part of Russia could be held in Donetsk and Luhansk as early as mid-May. It could happen a couple of months later, though, when Russian forces completely take over the regions.

That will permanently fracture Ukraine, and that can be called a ‘victory’ of sorts. One has to wait for what happens then.

What is happening now is that Moscow is replacing local officials loyal to the government in Kyiv, rerouting the occupied regions’ internet connections through Russian servers and censors and mandating the use of the rouble instead of Ukraine’s hryvnia. Kyiv has accused Russia of stealing 400,000 tons of grain from the areas it controls.

Konstantin Malofeev, a wealthy backer of Putin, has been quoted as saying: “We’ll absorb Ukraine region by region.” Arms and aid from the US to Ukraine has only slowed down the war, but the war will continue, maybe boil down to conflict levels witnessed

He conceded that the scale of military aid to Kyiv from the US and its allies “has been far greater than anticipated.” Together with determined Ukrainian resistance, that means a grinding war that “will drag on at a slow pace” for at least months to come, he said.

Remember the late 1990s war on Chechnya rebels by Russia? In 1999, the Russian government forces started an “anti-terrorist campaign” in Chechnya, in response to the invasion of Dagestan by Chechen-based Islamic forces. By early 2000 Russia almost completely destroyed the city of Grozny and succeeded in putting Chechnya under direct control of Moscow by late April. That lasted a long time and Russia managed the finances well.

This time, many of those same rebels are fighting the Ukrainians.

Whatever the situation, the war continues and millions keep being displaced.

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He still left the door ajar for negotiations, saying there was still time to avoid war. Putin, on the other hand, announced that his parliament, the Duma (the lower house), voted to approve Putin’s friendship deals with the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR). It also rumbber stamped his desire to use force if needed.

Echoing the Duma’s decision, Russia’s upper house, the Federation Council, gave Putin unanimous approval to deploy “peacekeepers” to the two breakaway Ukrainian regions now recognized by Moscow as independent, and potentially into other parts of Ukraine.

Biden’s “first tranche” of sanctions include steps to starve Russia of financing and target financial institutions and the country’s “elites.”

“There’s no question that Russia is the aggressor, so we’re clear eyed about the challenges we’re facing,” Biden said. “Nonetheless, there is still time to avert the worst case scenario that will bring untold suffering to millions of people.”

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