That didn’t work well. Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy on Ukraine who has been leading the business talks with the US side, shot off to Washington within two days of US President Donald Trump imposing his oil sanctions on Russia to do some damage control.

He was hoping to do the rounds and persuade the White House to back off, but it ended up that almost no one would see him. Moreover, after he gave interviews to CNN and Fox News, he got roasted in public by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who called him a “Russian propagandist" which is fair enough as that is what he is.

Currently, the Trump administration is swinging back and forth on Russia like a Newton's cradle toy. As I have argued this month, Trump is pursuing a minerals diplomacy where he is attaching minerals deals to anything foreign policy related. We have a piece on the site today covering the latest deal with Kazakhstan (which has a lot of minerals unlike Ukraine which doesn’t have any rare earth metals at all).

That is why Trump has been so soft on Russia: it has the most rare earth metals (REMs) after China. It’s the big prize and Trump has been reluctant to hit the Kremlin with sanctions as it will spoil his chances of doing business with Russia. That appears to have changed and by refusing to compromise, it could be argued that Putin has pushed Trump over a line – these sanctions are significant – the first ever since Trump took office – as they suggest that Trump has finally given up on any hope of cutting a deal with Putin.

So now the Trump administration is wheeling out some big guns: the oil sanctions and the promise of Tomahawks for Ukraine – on the face of it, both extremely powerful cards.

Putin doesn’t care. He would like to do a deal with Trump. He could do a deal with Trump. But he’s not going to compromise on Ukraine. He really does see it as an existential threat. Dmitriev made this point explicitly in his remarks on US TV. Putin is not going to back down. And despite signalling early on there was some limited wiggle room on territories, I assume that he hoped he could get Trump to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy into making concessions and that didn’t work.

It nearly did work. That was Trump’s “final offer” proposal in April at a London summit, where Trump pushed very hard for a deal that was basically a Putin shopping list of demands. Zelenskiy refused. The talks have gone nowhere since, despite a lot of drama.

Bottomline is Putin doesn’t care. He has already wrecked his relations with Europe forever and even if he got some sanctions relief from Trump, most of the sanctions on Russia will remain there for generations. The Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) continue to make good progress on the battlefield. The Economist came out with a risible story that claimed it would take 103 years to fully occupy Ukraine. Putin only needs to take Donbas to be able to claim “victory” and has taken twice as much territory this year as last year, according to Institute for the Study of War (ISW). At the weekend Russia’s chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov claimed that the key logistical hub of Pokrovsk has almost been surrounded and if that falls the entire Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) eastern defence could collapse.

The Russian economy, despite its budget problems, is pumping out arms and ammo in massive numbers. The incremental escalation continues. To answer both Ukraine’s new Flamingo cruise missile and the threat of Tomahawks, Putin unveiled his new Burevestnik cruise missile after the Oreshnik, which is another step closer to Armageddon. Russia is clearly winning an arms race in the escalating missile war, despite Ukraine’s impressive progress in the manufacturing and design of drones that is keeping it in the fight.

At the same time Europe has run out of money for Ukraine and the only hope of funding the war in 2026 is the Reparation Loans which are now stuck in committee until at least December, due to Belgium’s objectives. If Putin is betting that he could win this war, it doesn’t look like such a bad bet.

At the end of the day Trump’s threats are empty. He can’t send Ukraine Tomahawks as they have to be fired from a ship and Ukraine has no navy. The oil sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil won’t work either as between them they account for two thirds of all Russia’s oil exports, some 4.4mn barrels a day. If you really remove that much oil from the market, you will have a huge price spike and Trump won’t tolerate an oil price spike. Mid-term elections are not that far away. Oil experts say it will only take a few months for the Russians, Chinese and Indians to find some sort of workaround. They have in every case of new sanctions so far.

Dmitriev was hoping to change Trump’s mind yet again and it is significant that the Kremlin sent Dmitriev and not someone like Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as Dmitriev and his business offers are the one in the Kremlin that has the most leverage over Trump. The scale of his failure to make any progress at all suggests that Trump is out. Ukraine will be pleased that Trump was not turned, but the most likely outcome, if he has given up on a Russian deal, is that he will be out of Ukraine completely leaving it to Europe to carry the can.

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