Trump maintains that Putin “wants to end the war” and leaves up in the air whether he will sell the Tomahawk missiles that Ukraine is asking for

The first time it went very wrong. In February, the Americans removed from the White House Volodímir Zelenski with brooms after accusing him of “playing with World War III.” The reason: the Ukrainian boss refused to sign surrender to Russia.

The second, in August, the tone improved. Many analysts wondered, in fact, whether Donald Trump I was about to change sides. If he had reached the determination to strengthen the invaded to give him more negotiating cards against an aggressor with nuclear weapons. The third traveled accompanied by the European rulers best related to this administration.

But neither the first visit nor the second nor the third generated as many expectations as this one. Yesterday, Europeans took it for granted that the United States, finally exhausted of more promises than accomplished facts, would pressure the Kremlin to negotiate peace with Ukraine by giving Zelensky what his generals ask of him: access to Tomahawk missiles. Missiles capable of hitting military targets more than a thousand kilometers away. For example: refineries, barracks, factories or drone warehouses.

President Trump has kept the door open to the sale of these cruise missiles with less enthusiasm than a week earlier. President Zelensky offers Ukrainian drones in exchange. They are fast, they are precise and they are very cheap. Trump has also not made clear whether he will accept the proposal.

What the Ukrainian delegation in Washington did not expect, Axios reports, is that Trump would agree to a new meeting alone with Putin before receiving Zelensky. And that he would accept Budapest as a city for the meeting. Brussels and Kyiv consider that Hungary rows in favor of Moscow.

In Alaska in August, Trump promised a trilateral summit — with Putin and Zelensky — that has not yet occurred. What happened, instead, is that Russia escalated. He attacked the ministerial building and the surroundings of the European Union office in Kyiv. He launched drones against Poland, violated the airspace of several countries, altered the GPS of the airliner’s Ursula Von der Leyen.

And something else happened: Trump lost patience with Putin, accelerated the sale of weapons to Kyiv and allowed American intelligence agencies to collaborate with Ukrainian ones in selecting targets inside Russia.

Putin has reacted hastily to the possibility of Kyiv multiplying the damage against the industry that sustains the enemy war machine. It is worth remembering that Russia has lost more than a fifth of its oil refining capacity. That its crude oil exports fell 13% last month. That gasoline shortages are increasingly common in certain regions of the country. Ukraine, increasingly defenseless in the face of bombings against its cities and energy production plants, is trying to weaken Russian firepower from the source.

Trump has repeated that Putin “wants to end the war.” Zelensky doubts it. “Putin is not ready,” he responded. Before reminding him, by the way, that “he is not having success on the battlefield, he is losing many soldiers and his economy is going downhill.”