Donald Trump’s ambition to “stop the killing” and secure a ceasefire in Ukraine has collided once again with the intransigence of Vladimir Putin. Yet, astonishingly, the American president seems not to have noticed.
Last week he told Ukraine’s leadership that they would never receive another US weapon or intelligence report unless they agreed in principle to a 30-day ceasefire. So they did.
Immediately afterwards, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, declared that the ball was now in “Russia’s court”.
Putin’s 90-minute phone call with Mr Trump on Tuesday was the moment when the ball should have been returned. But the main public outcome was Putin’s rejection of a full ceasefire and agreement only to halt attacks on “energy and infrastructure”.
How did Mr Trump react? The White House could have announced that America would now give Russia a taste of the treatment meted out to Ukraine and muscle Putin into stopping the killing.
Instead, the US “readout” of the call contains not a hint of pressure; on the contrary, it talks enthusiastically of how an “improved bilateral relationship between the US and Russia has a huge upside” including “enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability”.
The conclusion is obvious: Putin has once again defied a public demand from Mr Trump – this time for a full ceasefire – and paid no price.
Even Putin’s agreement to stop attacking energy infrastructure amounts to less than might be thought.
Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on oil refineries and other assets deep inside Russia have probably inflicted more damage in recent weeks than the Kremlin’s barrage of missiles in the other direction.
Putin has played his familiar trick of agreeing to something that binds Ukraine’s hands far more tightly than his own.
But the relative lack of substance in the readout must itself raise suspicions.
Two presidents do not need to talk for 90 minutes to serve up the thin gruel in the public account of their call.
What else did Mr Trump and Putin discuss and what private agreements might they have made?
Ukraine and the rest of Europe are not party to these talks: they can only guess at what could be happening behind the scenes.
The only certainty is that the dismal pattern whereby Putin concedes nothing and offers nothing, while Trump declines to respond with any hint of steel, remains the order of the day.