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Accounts of an upcoming US-Russia presidential summit have been greatly exaggerated, it seems.

Only a few days after President Trump announced he planned to meet Russia's leader Putin in the Hungarian capital - "in approximately a fortnight" - the high-level talks has been put off without a new date.

A preliminary get-together by the two nations' leading diplomats has been cancelled, too.

"I prefer not to have a wasted meeting," Donald Trump told reporters at the executive mansion on Tuesday afternoon. "I don't want a pointless effort, so I will observe what happens."

• Trump says he wished to avoid a 'unproductive session' after plan for Putin talks postponed
• Letdown in Ukraine's capital as President Zelensky leaves White House without results

The on-again, off-again meeting is another twist in the president's attempts to mediate an end to war in Ukraine – a subject of renewed focus for the US president after he orchestrated a truce and prisoner exchange deal in Gaza.

While making remarks in the North African country last week to celebrate that truce deal, the president addressed Steve Witkoff, with a new request.

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

Nonetheless, the circumstances that converged to make a Middle East success possible for Witkoff and his team may be challenging to duplicate in a Ukraine war that has been ongoing for almost four years.

Reduced Influence

According to Witkoff, the key to achieving a agreement was the Israeli government's decision to attack Hamas negotiators in the Gulf state. It was a move that infuriated US partners in the Arab world but gave Trump bargaining power to pressure Israel's leader Benjamin Netanyahu into making a deal.

The US president gained from a long record of supporting Israel dating back to his first term, encompassing his decision to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem, to change US policy on the legality of Jewish communities in the occupied territories and, in recent times, his support for Israel's military campaign against Iran.

The American leader, in fact, is better regarded among Israelis than Netanyahu – a position that provided him with special sway over the nation's head.

Add in Trump's political and economic ties to key Arab players in the area, and he had a wealth of negotiating strength to force an agreement.

In the Ukraine war, on the other hand, the president has much less leverage. In recent months, he has vacillated between efforts to strong-arm the Russian president and then the Ukrainian leader, all with minimal visible progress.

The US leader has warned to enact new sanctions on Russia's oil and gas sales and to supply the Ukrainian forces with new long-range weapons. But he has also recognised that such actions could disrupt the global economy and intensify the war.

Meanwhile, the president has criticized openly Ukraine's president, temporarily cutting off intelligence-sharing with the country and suspending arms shipments to the country - only to then retreat in the face of worried European partners who caution a defeat of Ukraine could disrupt the entire region.

The president often boasts about his ability to meet and negotiate agreements, but his face-to-face meetings with the Russian and Ukrainian leaders have not appeared to move the hostilities any closer to a peaceful end.

The Russian president may actually be using the US leader's wish for a settlement – and belief in direct negotiations - as a means of influencing him.

In July, Russia's leader agreed to a high-level meeting in Alaska at the time when it seemed probable that Trump would sign off on congressional sanctions package backed by GOP senators. That legislation was afterwards delayed.

Recently, as reports spread that the White House was considering seriously shipping long-range missiles and Patriot anti-air batteries to Kyiv, the Russian leader phoned the US president who then touted the possible summit in Budapest.

The next day, Trump welcomed Ukraine's leader at the executive residence, but departed without agreements after a reportedly strained discussion.

Trump insisted that he was not being manipulated by Putin.

"You know, I have been manipulated all my life by skilled operators, and I came out really well," he remarked.

However the Ukrainian leader subsequently commented on the sequence of events.

"As soon as the issue of long-range mobility became a less accessible for Ukraine – for Ukraine – Russia quickly became less engaged in diplomacy," he stated.

So, in a short period, the president has shifted from considering the idea of sending missiles to Ukraine to organizing a Budapest summit with Russia's leader and confidentially pressuring the Ukrainian president to surrender the entire Donbas region – including territory Russian forces has been failed to capture.

He has ultimately settled on advocating a truce along current battle lines – a proposal the Russian government has rejected.

During his election campaign last year, Trump promised that he could resolve the Ukraine war in a matter of hours. He has subsequently abandoned that commitment, admitting that concluding the war is turning out more difficult than he anticipated.

It has been a uncommon admission of the limits of his power – and the difficulty of finding a peace plan when both parties wants, or is able to, give up the fight.