President Donald Trump had one priority going into his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in their hastily arranged summit on the former Russian territory of Alaska.

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“I want the killing to stop. I’m in this to stop the killing,” Trump said.

Trump’s No. 1 goal was to negotiate an immediate pause to the Ukraine war, which he said was killing 7,000 people a week. And his big stick was the threat of secondary sanctions that could cripple Russia’s vital oil revenue.

Trump vowed that if Putin disagreed, he would quit the talks and impose “very severe consequences” on Russia.

“I want to see a ceasefire rapidly. I don’t know if it’s going to be today, but I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today,” he said just before the meeting.

Putin’s goal was also clear: to convince Trump to back off his ceasefire ultimatum and persuade him that further sanctions would only prolong the war.

With his generals telling him he was winning in Ukraine, the last thing Putin wanted was a ceasefire.

Trump was counting on his rapport with Putin to carry the day, and based on a phone call he had with the Russian leader, he was convinced Putin was ready to deal.

“Because of a certain relationship that he has with me running this country, I believe … he’s going to make a deal,” Trump told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade. “I know him very well. Yes, I think he wants peace. I think he would tell me if he didn’t.”

Trump staged an elaborate welcome for Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, the only available location, as all the fancy resorts in Anchorage are booked in August.

He applauded Putin as he walked down a red carpet rolled out by U.S. troops and gave him a warm two-handed handshake as a Super Bowl-worthy flyover of a B-2 strategic bomber flanked by F-35 stealth fighters passed overhead.

It was an arrival more befitting an honored ally than a murderer whose forces were bombing innocent civilians at that very moment.

“You saw that when he got off his plane, I got off my plane. There’s a warmth there,” Trump said on Fox News. “There’s a decent feeling, and it’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

When they sat down to talk, Putin appealed to Trump’s ego, validating talking points Trump often sprinkles into his public comments — the 2020 election was rigged, Putin never would have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president, and under Trump, the United States was “hot as a pistol.”

“He’s a very smart guy,” Trump said in an interview that night with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I think that he respects our country now.”

It was classic Putin, said William Taylor, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

“He’s clever, and he is wily. He’s a KGB manipulator,” Taylor said.

It wasn’t until the post-summit press conference, during which no questions were taken, that it became obvious things had not gone as planned.

There was no mention of a ceasefire.

Putin said that while Russia was “sincerely interested” in ending the war, it would require that “all the root causes … be eliminated,” in other words, on Russia’s terms.

Trump said only that the talks had made some headway and that “many, many points” were agreed on.

In a predawn Truth Social post the next day, Trump confirmed that Putin had talked him out of the ceasefire.

“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” Trump wrote.

On Fox News the night before, he confirmed to Hannity that he’d dropped the threat of “severe consequences” for now. “Because of what happened today, I think I don’t have to think about that,” he said.  

The following Monday, Trump exalted in the pageantry of the historic White House summit in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and seven European leaders heaped praise on Trump’s peace efforts while trying to convince him that a ceasefire is the only way for real negotiations to begin.

“The path is open. You opened it,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said. “Now the way is open for complicated negotiations, and to be honest, we all would like to see a ceasefire. … I can’t imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire.”

Trump blew them off with the explanation that “in the six or so wars that we stopped, we haven’t had a ceasefire, and so I don’t know that it’s necessary.”

There were two big “deliverables” from his meeting with Putin, and Trump was counting on those to jump-start the peace process.

The first, and the biggest, was Trump’s belief that Putin had agreed to meet one-on-one with Zelensky and then, following that, in a three-way meeting that would also include him.

The second was a breakthrough described by special envoy Steve Witkoff as “game-changing,” that Russia would accept security guarantees for Ukraine akin to NATO’s Article 5 provision that “an attack against one is an attack against all.”

“We didn’t think that we were anywhere close to agreeing to Article 5 protection from the United States,” Witkoff said on CNN.

But as the week wore on, the luster of those two agreements began to fade.

First, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement “unequivocally rejecting” any deployment of troops from NATO countries in Ukraine.

Then, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov cast doubt on whether Putin, who won’t even say Zelensky’s name, would meet with him, without “step-by-step” preparations from “the expert level and up.” As for the Washington summit, Lavrov dismissed it, saying, “No constructive proposals were voiced by the Europeans there.”

And he also threw cold water on European plans to create a security force for Ukraine in the event a peace deal is reached, calling “any serious discussion of security” without Russia “a road to nowhere” and implying that Russia should be the guarantor of Ukraine’s future security.

A “road to nowhere” might well describe the state of play in the Trump administration’s peace process, say national security analysts, who are increasingly pessimistic about any real progress anytime soon.

Like former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, from the president’s first term, who is now a frequent Trump critic. Bolton, referencing Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said that having dealt with Lavrov for years, he sees his comments as a reflection of how confident the Russians feel.

“They have escaped the sanctions that have been threatened by President Trump. They’ve heard Secretary of State Rubio say, ‘We’re not going to sanction them because it will cause diplomatic efforts to fail.’ And they are trying to keep the table set so that things work out in their direction,” Bolton said.

The stark reality is sinking in that for all the diplomatic pomp surrounding the two summits, the circumstances in Ukraine remain static.

“The war is still going on. There is deep, hard fighting going on in the front line. The Russians are still targeting Ukrainian cities and killing Ukrainian civilians. And we’re no closer to a deal ending this war,” Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said on CNN. “We’re further away, because the president, before he met with Vladimir Putin, said that we needed to have a ceasefire first.”

Trump vacillates between cautious pragmatism, one day telling Fox News, “It’s possible that [Putin] doesn’t want to make a deal,” and on another day is caught on a hot mic, gushing, “I think he wants to make a deal. I think he wants to make a deal for me. Do you understand that? As crazy as it sounds.”

Taylor said, “I think it does sound crazy to think that Putin is doing it for Donald Trump.”

Other Trump critics call it naïve, narcissistic, and even delusional.

“I think delusional is the exact word to be used,” Daalder said. “The idea that Vladimir Putin will do something for the good of Donald Trump is ridiculous. Vladimir Putin does something for the good of Vladimir Putin.”

Putin has given no hint he’s willing to compromise on any of his demands, including that Ukraine cede the entire eastern Donbas region to Russia, including about a quarter of the Donetsk it has been unable to capture in 3 1/2 years of war.

That would require Ukraine to give up a heavily reinforced 30-mile defensive line known as the “fortress belt,” giving Russia a huge strategic advantage should it decide to restart the war.

A recent poll showed that some 75% of Ukrainians oppose ceding any more territory to Putin, and under Ukraine’s constitution, it cannot be done without the approval of citizens in a nationwide referendum.

And without a ceasefire, there would be no way to hold a referendum that would be free of Russian influence.

“For us, it is very emotional. For every inch of Ukrainian territory that we are holding on to right now, we have paid an ultimate price,” said Kira Rudyk, a member of the Ukrainian parliament. “So it will be, I would say, politically almost impossible to go ahead with it, and Ukrainian people would not accept it at all. … I think what can be feasible … is freezing the conflict with the security guarantees alongside the current front line.”

Dmytro Kuleba, former Ukrainian foreign minister, argued, “Swapping land is not workable. It’s not going to work. I think we will forget about this idea quite pretty soon.”

“The only viable solution for the land issue, which indeed is the biggest obstacle in negotiations, is to leave this matter in the gray zone where both sides will claim their title of ownership on this land,” he said.

There is still a chance Trump might be persuaded by his pal Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a longtime advocate of Ukraine, to give the U.S. Senate a green light to pass Graham’s “sledgehammer” sanctions bill that enjoys wide approval in Congress.

“My advice to President @realDonaldTrump and @SecRubio is to convince Putin that if this war does not come to an end, we will crush the Russian economy by going after countries that buy their cheap oil and gas,” Graham posted on X.

But for Trump, who has threatened tougher sanctions at least four times and hasn’t followed through, the time to put more pressure on Putin always seems to be two weeks away.

“I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but, no, we don’t have to think about that right now,” he told Hannity. “I think the meeting went very well.”

Daalder doesn’t see it that way.

“If the president wants to end this war, he needs to get serious about putting pressure on Russia, and he needs to get serious about supporting Ukraine,” he said. “I think it’s pretty clear, and it’s been clear for a very long time. The way to end this war is for Russia to believe that it cannot achieve what it wants through force of arms and needs to come to the negotiating table.”

The problem with allowing the fighting to continue while both sides try to reach a comprehensive permanent agreement is that it takes too long, and too many people die while negotiations drag on, said Richard Haass, president emeritus at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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“As complicated as a ceasefire can be, it’s an order of magnitude simpler or less complicated than a peace agreement,” Haass argued. “A peace agreement is meant to endure. It’s meant to be permanent. It has to deal with every single so-called final status issue about territory, about the presence of foreign troops, about security issues, about population transfers, you name it.”

“Essentially, we want the killing to stop,” he said. “A ceasefire can be done without prejudice. Each side can keep all of its dreams and keep all of its positions. Nothing signed away. What we’re simply trying to do is stop the war.”