Trump's men in Moscow led back to where they started

Before the harsh white glare of the Kremlin reception room came a telling prologue: Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's self-described "deal guys", being led by Kremlin officials through the sparkling streets of a festive Moscow.

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Wasn't it lovely, Vladimir Putin asked later, as both sides sat down to a five-hour negotiation that seems to have led back to where they started. "It's a magnificent city," Witkoff replied. Then the cameras cut out.

What followed behind closed doors was not difficult to predict. Despite all the pressure on Ukraine to make concessions that Putin would accept, the assurances from the Trump administration that this was the best chance yet for peace, and the hype from Witkoff and Kushner, the Ukraine peace deal has stumbled over an intractable, inevitable obstacle: Putin himself.

The road to peace has always led through the Kremlin. That's not a surprise given that it was Putin who launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago that has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions more displaced.

Yet for weeks, the Trump administration has put pressure mainly on Ukraine - a junior partner far easier to cajole and cow than Russia - in order to extract maximally advantageous conditions that it could offer to Putin in exchange for peace.