Ignorieren Sie den Unruhe. Putin kann offen für einen Ukraine -Deal stehen

Despite the claims last week that he is simply stringing President Trump along, President Putin does appear genuinely interested in seeing if he can get a deal that suits him over Ukraine. But the problem for everyone else is that he is perfectly willing to walk away and keep fighting the war, too.

Diplomatic efforts until now have foundered on a Western unwillingness to admit publicly what many recognised off the record: that Kyiv was neither going to join Nato nor regain the occupied territories any time soon, and that Putin would not accept a ceasefire ahead of peace talks that Ukraine could use to prepare for the resumption of hostilities.

More to the point, officials and scholars close to the Kremlin are signalling that there is more room for movement than official statements suggest. Limits on the size of the Ukrainian military have been described by one as Moscow “chancing its arm”, while on security guarantees, there is some willingness to accept measures that do not rest on the semi-permanent basing of armed Nato troops in the country.

As one senior Western diplomat in Moscow put it to me: “There are no guarantees that this will get anywhere, but there are certainly signals that there may be more scope to talk than in the past”