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Reports of an upcoming American-Russian presidential summit have been overstated, apparently.

Only a few days after Donald Trump announced he planned to confer with Russia's leader Putin in the Hungarian capital - "within two weeks or so" - the summit has been put off without a new date.

A preliminary meeting by the two nations' leading diplomats has been called off, as well.

"I prefer not to have a wasted meeting," President Trump informed the press at the White House on a recent weekday. "I don't want a pointless effort, so I will observe what happens."

• Donald Trump states he did not want a 'unproductive session' after plan for Putin talks postponed
• Letdown in Ukraine's capital as Zelensky departs Washington without results

The on-again, off-again summit is another development in Trump's efforts to broker an end to hostilities in the Eastern European nation – a topic of increased attention for the US president after he arranged a truce and prisoner exchange deal in Gaza.

While making remarks in the North African country recently to commemorate that truce deal, Trump turned to Steve Witkoff, with a fresh directive.

"It is essential to get Russia done," he said.

However, the conditions that converged to make a Middle East success possible for Witkoff and his team may be difficult to duplicate in a conflict in Ukraine that has been raging for almost several years.

Reduced Influence

Per Witkoff, the key to unlocking a agreement was Israel's decision to attack Hamas negotiators in Qatar. It was a move that angered US partners in the Arab world but provided Trump leverage to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into making a deal.

Trump gained from a long record of siding with Israel dating back to his first term, including his decision to relocate the US embassy to the contested city, to change US policy on the legality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and, more recently, his support for Israel's military campaign against the Islamic Republic.

The US president, in fact, is better regarded among the Israeli public than Netanyahu – a position that gave him special sway over the Israeli leader.

Combine Trump's political and economic ties to influential Arab nations in the area, and he had a abundant negotiating strength to force an deal.

Regarding the conflict in Ukraine, on the other hand, Trump has much less leverage. In recent months, he has swung between efforts to pressure the Russian president and then the Ukrainian leader, all with little seeming effect.

Trump has threatened to enact new sanctions on Russian energy exports and to supply the Ukrainian forces with new long-range weapons. But he has also recognised that doing so could disrupt the global economy and further escalate the war.

Meanwhile, the US leader has criticized openly Ukraine's president, temporarily cutting off information exchange with Ukraine and suspending weapon deliveries to the country - then to retreat in the wake of concerned European allies who caution a Ukrainian collapse could disrupt the whole area.

Trump loves to tout his skill to sit down and hammer out deals, but his face-to-face meetings with both Putin and Zelensky haven't seemed to move the war any closer to a peaceful end.

Putin may in fact be exploiting the US leader's wish for a settlement – and faith in direct negotiations - as a method of influencing him.

During the summer, Putin agreed to a summit in Alaska at the time when it seemed probable that the president would approve on legislative penalties supported by Senate Republicans. That bill was afterwards put on hold.

Recently, as news emerged that the US administration was considering seriously shipping Tomahawk cruise missiles and Patriot anti-air batteries to Kyiv, the president of Russia phoned Trump who then promoted the possible meeting in Budapest.

The following day, Trump hosted Zelensky at the White House, but left without agreements after a allegedly tense meeting.

Trump insisted that he was not being played by the Russian president.

"As you are aware, I have been manipulated all my life by the best of them, and I came out really well," he said.

But the president of Ukraine subsequently commented on the timeline of developments.

"Once the matter of long-range mobility became a little further away for Ukraine – for Ukraine – Russia almost automatically became less interested in diplomacy," he stated.

So, in a short period, the president has shifted from entertaining the prospect of sending missiles to Ukraine to organizing a meeting in Hungary with Russia's leader and privately pressuring the Ukrainian president to cede the entire Donbas region – including territory Russia has been failed to capture.

He has finally decided on advocating a ceasefire along current battle lines – a proposal the Russian government has refused to accept.

On the campaign trail last year, the candidate promised that he could end the Ukraine war in a very short time. He has since abandoned that pledge, admitting that concluding the war is turning out more difficult than he anticipated.

It has been a uncommon admission of the constraints of his power – and the difficulty of establishing a framework for peace when both parties wants, or can afford to, give up the fight.