Has Trump run out of moves in Putin’s chess game?

They certainly appeared to be enjoying themselves, strolling through Red Square with Vladimir Putin’s representative Kirill Dmitriev, after eating lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

But after five hours of talks between Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and President Vladimir Putin, was anything actually achieved? In short, not a lot.

“So far, a compromise hasn’t been found,” Yuri Ushakov, senior Putin adviser told reporters on Wednesday. “Some of the American proposals seem more or less acceptable, but they need to be discussed.”

They agreed to talk more, of course, perhaps as soon as Thursday in Miami, but on the main points required to end the fighting, Putin did not budge.

It may feel a little unnecessary to remind ourselves that Donald Trump said the bloody fighting that will have reached its four-year anniversary next February, was something he could put an end to in a day.

But it’s important to do so, not to take a cheap jab at the US president, but to underscore how little thought he put into this matter and how by asking billionaire friends from New York and his son-in-law rather than career diplomats to lead the process, he has little hope of success.

When Ronald Reagan first met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva in 1985, he was accompanied by two high-level advisers, one of whom, Jack Matlock, was a linguist and Soviet affairs specialist who would later be US Ambassador to Moscow.

By contrast, when Witkoff held three meetings with Putin in February, March and April, he did not even have his own translator, relying on one provided by the Kremlin. This was something that horrified professional diplomats who pointed out the obvious edge this gave the Russian side.

There was a similar haplessness to the way the current plan being discussed came about.

When a 28-point proposal was leaked to the media, it was pointed out many of the items – such as a limit on the size of Ukraine’s military and its ceding of territory not even captured by Moscow – were long-time Russian demands.

US Senators who were briefed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he told them it was a “wish list” from the Russians.

Scrambling to try and clean up its own mess, Washington then agreed to a new 19-point plan that had input from Ukraine, as well as the UK and other Nato members.

At this point, one has to wonder if all this was pure sloppiness or more of an indicator, that despite a clear wish to win the Nobel Prize – something even Hillary Clinton said Trump would deserve if he brought a just end to the conflict – the president has simply lost whatever enthusiasm he had for this subject.

While many presidents often focus more on foreign policy in their second terms, something Trump has been criticised for by the likes of former allies such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, many believe Trump is mainly interested in enriching himself and his family.

The Trump Organisation, headed by his sons, Erich and Donald Jr, has struck deals throughout the Middle East, and Kushner too.

The pair, along with Witkoff’s son, Zach, are also major investors in crypto-currencies – as is US president. These are lightly regulated. Democrats on Capitol Hill have alleged Trump has “transformed the presidency into a personal money-making operation, adding billions of dollars to his net worth through cryptocurrency schemes entangled with foreign governments, corporate allies, and criminal actors”. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

What does seem certain, however, is Trump would like to see Russia lose its pariah status and return to the community of nations.

While some have long alleged Putin must have some compromising dirt on Trump – kompromat – to explain why he seems to favour Moscow over Kyiv, it may be that the president hopes US companies – his included – can get on and do business with Moscow if the war ends and sanctions lifted.

In a piece headlined, Make Money Not War: Trump’s Real Plan for Peace in Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal recently revealed how Witkoff, Kushner and Dmitriev, who is the head of Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund, discussed the business upside of ending the conflict during a meeting in Miami Beach in October.

It said they were seeking a way to “bring Russia’s $2 trillion economy in from the cold – with American businesses first in line to beat European competitors to the dividends”.

It has also been pointed out that while Witkoff has made numerous trips to Russia this year, he has yet to make a single one to visit to Ukraine.

None of this can make happy reading for Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It will be equally disheartening for Nato countries, whose Secretary General Mark Rutte this week played down the absence of Rubio from a summit in Brussels.

In what was almost certainly the truth, Rutte said Trump was the “only person in the whole world able to break the deadlock”.

The question remains, does he want to? If Trump is going to properly counter Putin’s clever moves, he needs to raise his game and fast.