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Accounts of an upcoming American-Russian leadership meeting have been overstated, apparently.

Just days after Donald Trump said he intended to meet Russian President Putin in Budapest - "within two weeks or so" - the high-level talks has been put off without a new date.

A initial meeting by the both countries' leading diplomats has been cancelled, too.

"I don't want to have a fruitless discussion," Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. "I don't want a waste of time, so I will observe what transpires."

• Donald Trump says he did not want a 'wasted meeting' after plan for negotiations with Putin shelved
• Disappointment in Kyiv as President Zelensky leaves Washington empty-handed

The on-again, off-again summit is another twist in the president's attempts to broker an end to war in Ukraine – a subject of renewed focus for the American leader after he arranged a ceasefire and hostage release agreement in the Palestinian territory.

During a speech in Egypt last week to commemorate that ceasefire agreement, the president turned to his lead diplomatic negotiator, with a fresh directive.

"We have to get the Russian situation resolved," he said.

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

Less Leverage

Per Witkoff, the crucial element to achieving a agreement was Israel's decision to strike representatives of Hamas in the Gulf state. It was a move that angered US partners in the Arab world but provided the president leverage to pressure Israel's leader Netanyahu into reaching an agreement.

The US president benefited from a long record of siding with the Israeli state since his initial presidency, including his decision to relocate the American embassy to the contested city, to alter America's position on the lawfulness of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories 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 provided him with unique influence over the nation's head.

Add in the president's connections in politics and business to key Arab players in the area, and he had a wealth of diplomatic muscle to secure an agreement.

Regarding the conflict in Ukraine, on the other hand, the president has much less leverage. In recent months, he has vacillated between attempts to pressure Putin and then the Ukrainian leader, all with minimal visible progress.

Trump has threatened to impose additional penalties on Russia's oil and gas sales and to provide Ukraine with advanced missile systems. But he has also acknowledged that such actions could harm the global economy and intensify the war.

Meanwhile, the president has publicly berated Zelensky, halting briefly information exchange with the country and suspending weapon deliveries to the country - then to back off in the face of concerned European allies who caution a defeat of Ukraine could disrupt the whole area.

Trump loves to tout his skill to meet and hammer out deals, but his face-to-face meetings with the Russian and Ukrainian leaders have not appeared to advance the hostilities any nearer a peaceful end.

Putin may in fact be using Trump's desire for a settlement – and faith in in-person deal-making - as a means of influencing him.

In July, Putin agreed to a summit in the US state at the time when it seemed probable that Trump would approve on legislative penalties supported by Senate Republicans. That bill was afterwards delayed.

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

The following day, the president hosted Ukraine's leader at the executive residence, but left without agreements after a reportedly 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 remarked.

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

"Once the issue of long-range mobility became a little further away for Ukraine – for our nation – Russia almost automatically became less interested in negotiations," he said.

Thus, in a matter of days, Trump has bounced from entertaining the prospect of sending missiles to Ukraine to organizing a Budapest summit with Putin and privately urging the Ukrainian president to surrender all of Donbas – even territory Russian forces has been unable to conquer.

He has finally settled on calling for a ceasefire along present frontlines – a proposal the Russian government has rejected.

On the campaign trail last year, Trump promised that he could resolve the conflict in Ukraine in a very short time. He has since abandoned that pledge, admitting that concluding the hostilities is turning out harder than he expected.

It has been a rare acknowledgement of the limits of his authority – and the difficulty of establishing a peace plan when neither side desires, or can afford to, give up the fight.