While the White House is starting to lose patience with Vladimir Putin, having already notoriously done so with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy back in February, the differences in negotiating New York-style compared with Moscow-style seem to be taking their toll, all at a time when a pivot towards China and Taiwan – already a key focus in the Obama administration – is keenly awaited in Washington.

Vice President J.D. Vance said Monday that, after around 120 days in office, if there is no resolution soon to the Russia-Ukraine war, the U.S. will walk away.

Vance said: "We understand that there's a bit of a stalemate here, and I think the president will say to President Putin: 'Hey, are you taking this seriously?'"

Meanwhile Matthew Kroenig, a prominent American security expert and foreign policy strategist, and who has advised several U.S. administrations, said that as first and foremost a businessman, Trump is likely to see blood as a big and unnecessary expense.

Kroenig said: "I think that Trump team came in and thought that getting a ceasefire would be easy and I think from Trump's point of view as a businessman, all this killing is inefficient, let's get a ceasefire, let's stop the killing and let's do business, and so I think he has been surprised at how hard this has been. We see that Trump is getting frustrated with Putin's unwillingness to negotiate in good faith."

Jade McGlynn, researcher at King's College London's Department of War Studies, who has focused on Kremlin aggression and propaganda patterns across several books, said Trump easy pickings for Putin.

"Vladimir Putin is quite good at manipulating people but I don't think that he needs to be all that good to manipulate Trump; I think President Trump is keen to make the war go away, and is slightly besotted with the Russian leader, and I think the Russian leader is perfectly aware of that and probably, slightly, cannot believe his luck," McGlynn said.

Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who has over 30 years in foreign service, told "Välisilm" that Trump has actually grasped that Putin is playing him, with the question being what to do with that knowledge.

"Of course, yes," Volker replied to "Välisilm" host Johannes Tralla's question if the Russian leader is manipulating Trump.

"Well, you have to differentiate between recognizing that Putin is trying to play them, and deciding what to do about that. I think they know; I think they recognize it, but then you have to make a tactical judgment, what is the best way to keep pushing for a ceasefire," Volker continued.

In McGlynn's view, Trump stepping back from mediating a peace plan between Ukraine and Russia might be no bad thing.

"I think that if Trump and the USA walk away that's probably for the best at this point rather than them enforcing and continuing to say silly things like 'oh, the people of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are just Russians anyway and should be given over to Russia' – I was in Zaporizhzhia about 14 days ago; definitely not Russian, definitely Ukrainian, free and living its life as well as it can. The problem so far is that some of the larger countries in Europe, they've been really, really good at language, great talk, you know, really beautiful words, and yet the actions have been entirely underwhelming, and ultimately you know: We're a rich continent, we have a lot of people, we have a lot of innovation, we have many many strengths – it's a choice, it's a political choice for us to be incapable of defending Ukraine," McGlynn said.

Volker, too, thought the U.S. mainly wants Europe to take the lead on this. "I don't think America has a clear plan, other than that it wants Europe to take the lead, and I think that that is happening now, you are seeing Europeans take more of a lead, and that's what Trump wants."

In any case, Volker noted, many people tend to overestimate the potential harm Trump is capable of causing. Ultimately, the American president can't steamroll Europe, rhetoric aside.

He said: "So suppose Putin says I want you to recognize as Russian territory everything we have currently conquered and in fact all of the four provinces and all of Crimea; this is all Russian territory. Will that really matter? Will that change what Ukraine does, will that change what Europe does? I don't think so. I think Ukraine is in a much different situation today than it was in '22, when they couldn't have survived without American military support – now they have a pipeline of some support, they have European countries providing a lot more support, and they are producing their own defense industry, their own drones, their own tech, which is actually some of the most important stuff in the war effort right now, particularly on the front lines."

Security policy expert Olga Oliker meanwhile said that regardless of how the Trump administration fares going forward in mediating the Ukraine peace process, it has been a teachable moment for Europe too.

She said: "The idea of Europe defending Europe is not new, and is probably a smart idea regardless, because what Donald Trump demonstrates is it's bad to put all of your eggs in a basket that lies across an ocean from you."

The "Välisilm" report was filed before Monday's phone call between Trump and Putin, though that failed to make any real progress on the Ukraine war, and again, many critics have said the outcome benefitted the Russian leader more than it did Trump. The latter once again hinted at withdrawing from the peace process, declined to impose further sanctions, while Zelenskyy contradicted Trump by warning that U.S. disengagement would empower Putin.

Last Friday's talks in Istanbul similarly did not make any headway beyond arranging a prisoner of war swap. Putin declined to attend the summit, sending a relatively low level delegation instead.

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