Trump left empty-handed because there's no deal yet that Russia and Ukraine can do

The US president has overlooked a vital lesson of war - that combatants will only begin talking when fighting has become futile

- Philip Collins

After three hours in Anchorage, Alaska, after two short speeches in which the Russian leader barely mentioned Ukraine and the American leader didn't mention it at all, President Trump is in danger of failing to live up to the compliment he once paid himself. In his own estimation, Trump is the man to swerve the pieties of summitry and cut a deal mere diplomatic mortals would find impossible.

On becoming president, he claimed that he could end the war in a day. Russia has doubled the number of drones and missiles fired towards Ukraine since then. Trump set President Putin a deadline to reach a peace deal, but did nothing when the deadline came and went. A flunky rolled out a red carpet for Putin in Alaska, yet, as Trump flew out, he had no ceasefire, no basis for agreement, and none of the "severe consequences" that he had promised in the event of there being no deal.

In his signature volume, The Art of the Deal, Trump inadvertently supplies the reason why, despite his claim of progress, he got so little. "Protect the downside," he writes in his chapter on business principles, "and the upside will take care of itself." Protecting the downside for Ukraine was precisely the subject of the call that Trump took with European leaders and President Zelensky last Wednesday. In the prelude to Alaska, Trump had spoken loosely about "land swapping", which prompted a strong response from Sir Keir Starmer. President Macron said after the call that Trump had agreed to make no territorial concessions without the explicit consent of Ukraine.