Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.

Since the invasion, that has been an American mantra – the promise not to indulge in Russia’s game of carving up third countries between the two superpowers.

Not any more.

In what Donald Trump called a “highly productive” phone call, he and Vladimir Putin “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.

If that is what happened, it is a great victory for Putin’s world view.

The Russian president has always believed that only those countries that decide the fate of others can be truly sovereign.

He has always been determined that Russia would be one of the great powers – along with the United States and China – qualified to carve the rest of the world up between them.

That is why he always wanted to talk to Washington, not Kyiv, about the fate of Ukraine. Anything else would be a humiliation.

Yet a victory for Putin’s ego is not the same as a victory in the war.

At least, it does not have to be.