Why Trump made progress on Gaza but couldn’t with Putin on Ukraine

Reports of an impending US-Russia leadership summit are exaggerated, it seems.

Days after Donald Trump planned to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest – “within two weeks” – the summit has been postponed indefinitely.

The preliminary meeting of the top diplomats of the two countries has also been cancelled.

“I don’t want a wasted meeting,” President Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. “I don’t want to waste time, so I’ll see what happens.”

The on-again, off-again summit is the latest twist in Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine — a topic of renewed interest for the US president after arranging a cease-fire and hostage-release deal in Gaza.

While criticizing Egypt last week to celebrate the ceasefire agreement, Trump turned to his chief diplomatic negotiator, Steve Witkoff, with a new request.

“We have to finish Russia,” he said.

However, for Witkoff and his team, the circumstances aligned to make Gaza successful could make it difficult to replicate the nearly four-year-old Ukraine war.

According to Witkoff, the key to unlocking the deal was Israel’s decision to attack Hamas negotiators in Qatar. The move angered America’s Arab allies but gave Trump leverage to press Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a deal.

Trump has benefited from a long record of favoring Israel during his first term, including his decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, changing the US stance on the legality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and, more recently, his support for Israel’s military campaign against Iran.

The US president is, in fact, more popular with Israelis than Netanyahu – a position that gave him unique influence over the Israeli leader.

Add Trump’s political and economic ties to key Arab players in the region, and he had the diplomatic power to force a deal.

In the Ukraine war, by contrast, Trump’s advantage is much smaller. Over the past nine months, he has alternated between efforts to strengthen Putin and then Zelensky, all to little effect.

Trump has threatened to impose new sanctions on Russian energy exports and give Ukraine new long-range weapons. But they also recognize that doing so could disrupt the global economy and exacerbate war.

Meanwhile, the president has publicly rebuked Zelensky, temporarily halted intelligence sharing with Ukraine and suspended arms shipments to the country — only to retreat in the face of concerned European allies who warn a Ukrainian collapse could destabilize the entire region.

Trump likes to tout his ability to sit down and make deals, but his face-to-face meetings with both Putin and Zelensky don’t seem to have moved the war any closer to a resolution.

Putin may be using Trump’s willingness to deal — and confidence in making deals in person — as a tool to influence him.

In July, Putin agreed to a summit in Alaska as it appeared Trump would sign the sanctions package to Congress with the support of Senate Republicans. The Act was subsequently suspended.

Last week, as reports surfaced that the White House was seriously considering sending Tomahawk cruise missiles and Patriot anti-air batteries to Kiev, the Russian leader called Trump who later claimed a possible summit in Budapest.

The next day, Trump hosted Zelensky at the White House, But after a tense meeting, they left empty-handed.

Trump insisted that Putin was not taking a stand.

“You know, I’ve played the best of them all my life and I’ve come out really good,” he said.

But the Ukrainian leader later noted the sequence of events.

“As soon as the issue of long-range mobility became a little bit distant for us – for Ukraine – Russia automatically lost interest in diplomacy,” he said.

So, within days, Trump has shifted plans for a Budapest summit with Putin from entertaining the possibility of sending missiles to Ukraine and privately pressing Zelensky to give up all of Donbas – including territory that Russia could not conquer.

He has finally settled on calling for a cease-fire on the current course of the war – which Russia has refused to accept.

On the campaign trail last year, Trump promised he could end the Ukraine war within hours. He has since reneged on that pledge, saying that ending the war was proving more difficult than he expected.

It’s a rare acknowledgment of the limits of its power – and the difficulty of finding a framework for peace when neither side is willing or able to give up the fight.