It’s fairly obvious that the talks between Russia and the US have already stalled, and there seems little prospect of major progress as things stand now.

For President Trump the stated goal was to speedily achieve a total cessation of hostilities. He was very explicit on this. And after some maneuvers Ukraine expressed its willingness, and Europeans and others offered their support.

After at least two extensive round of talks in Saudi Arabia it should be obvious also to more skeptical voices that President Putin has no intention to agree to a ceasefire at this point. He still believes that he can achieve major breakthroughs on the battlefield, and he is anyhow opposed to a ceasefire that isn’t coupled with very significant Ukrainian concessions on his key demands beyond territory.

The Russian tactic so far has been to seek to deflect the Trump demand and have the talks bogged down in details of more limited arrangements. So far this tactics has proved successful. There is some grumbling from Trump, but so far he keeps up the appearance of ongoing progress towards the goal he has set.

This can’t go on for too long, and the key question is what Trump will do when - perhaps in a month or so - it becomes even more obvious that he will fail to achieve his main aim of a ceasefire.

I think there are three options.

The first is that he actually understands that it’s only by depriving the Kremlin leadership of the illusion that they can achieve further military advances that it will start to seriously consider a ceasefire, and that this can only be achieved by significantly steeping up pressure on Russia. This can then be done primarily by increased military support to Ukraine, but there might also be other measures directly aimed at Russia that are possible.

This would be the most logic conclusion, but is perhaps the least likely.

The second would be that he’s fooled by Putin into in some way believing that the ceasefire has been blocked by the Ukrainians or the Europeans or some combination of them, and that he should cut support for Ukraine and seek to punish the Europeans. He could demand that they should engage on lengthy talks on the gradual unwinding of sanctions or other concessions in order to get Putin more interested in a ceasefire.

This perhaps somewhat more likely, but will only bring a temporary reprieve, since it just gives Putin further possibilities to draw out the process without agreeing to a ceasefire. And if he then desperately slides into a maximum concessions scenario - as he did with the Talibans leading to the February 2021 agreement - he will at some stage lose both the Ukrainians and the Europeans.

The third option would then be what might be called the North Korea option, that is just saying that it didn’t work and walk away from the entire effort. That was the what he did after his spectacular effort with North Korea didn’t work out. He just walked away and never returned.

This will be less easy in view of how high he climbed on the pole on this question, but is by no means inconceivable.

The next few weeks will be interesting. The only thing that’s certain is that there will be no ceasefire within the next month.