President announces a three-day Russia-Ukraine ceasefire that conveniently covers Victory Day.

The President announced Friday that Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a three-day ceasefire. May ninth, tenth, and eleventh. A thousand prisoners home from each side. I asked and President Putin agreed. President Zelenskyy agreed, both readily.

Hon. Three days.

The war is going on four years. Three days is not a ceasefire, that’s a smoke break. The kind of pause where both sides reload, regroup, count the dead, count the prisoners, and start back up Tuesday morning with whatever they didn’t shoot off Friday.

Now I am not the kind of woman who refuses a small piece of good news. A thousand soldiers go home to their mamas this weekend who would not otherwise have. That is not nothing. That is a real human thing, and the families crying at airports in Kyiv and in towns I cannot pronounce in Russia, those tears are the only part of this whole story that is unambiguous.

The rest of it, though.

May ninth is Victory Day in Russia. The day Putin marches the tanks across Red Square to remind everybody his grandfather beat Hitler so therefore he can do whatever he wants. He has been wanting that parade quiet for three years. The ceasefire, conveniently, makes it quiet. Zelenskyy actually said the words out loud. Red Square matters less to him than the prisoners. Which is the diplomatic way of saying fine, have your parade, give me my men back.

The President is calling this the beginning of the end. Three days. With Victory Day in the middle. With the same trenches and the same artillery in the same places when the sun comes up Tuesday.

I have seen this trick at every diner I have worked at. Some guy walks in, runs up a tab, doesn’t have the cash, says he’ll be right back. Comes back twenty minutes later with twelve dollars and a smile, says we’re squared up. He is not squared up. He owes me forty more. But the twelve dollars is real, and the smile is real, and if you are tired enough you take the twelve dollars and you tell yourself it is a start.

The President took the twelve dollars Friday. Took the picture. Called it a beginning. The mothers got their boys for the weekend. The trenches go back to work Tuesday.

That is the deal he made.

Funny how that works.