Trump has abandoned his own peace plan
First a caveat: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were on the phone for two hours.
Even allowing for the delay caused by translation between English and Russian, that is a lengthy call. And we do not know what else was said beyond the statements put out by the Kremlin and the White House.
Nonetheless, the respective readouts are revealing. Mr Trump's focus on trade illustrates two things.
First, he still does not seem to understand what Putin calls 'the root causes of the conflict' – or does not care about them.
The Russian leader is driven by the goal of righting 'Lenin's mistake' of allowing Ukraine to exist, of addressing what he considers a fundamental challenge to Russia's existence as a great power, of restoring the old empire and Russia's place as one of the leading poles of power on the planet.
Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine are driven by self-preservation.
There remains an enormous gulf between those positions. Neither is the sort of thing you abandon on the offer of a trade deal.
But Mr Trump's objective has always seemed to be less about peace in Ukraine, than normalising America's ties with Russia.
Read with that in mind, his enthusiasm about the 'UNLIMITED' potential of 'TRADE' with Russia once peace comes makes more sense.
That is consistent with much of his previous rhetoric, so it should be taken seriously.
It suggests Mr Trump is impatient to ditch wartime sanctions on Russia sooner rather than later.
That in turn implies the White House will push for a quick deal rather than a good deal, and that Russia will be able to rebuild its economic and thus military power more quickly than previously thought. Bad news for Ukraine and Europe.
There is little here to suggest peace really is imminent, however.
For while Putin agreed with Mr Trump that 'we are generally on the right track' for peace, he makes clear there are several stations to go through to get there.
He spoke after the call not of imminent peace, but 'a memorandum on a possible future peace accord' including 'the principles of settlement, the timing of a possible peace agreement'.
And of course, he said 'the main thing for us is to eliminate the root causes of this crisis'.
Talks have resumed. The two sides met in Istanbul last week for the first time since 2022. But they could go on for a very long time.
In the meantime, the fighting will continue, and troops on the ground will use force to make the diplomatic delegations 'take into account new realities' – another bit of Russian diplomatese, best translated as might makes right.
Maybe the war will end this year. But don't hold your breath.
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