We are now two days away from Donald Trump's latest arbitrary deadline with Russia's Vladimir Putin. Talks continued today, and seemed (from the little information released) to have at least been somewhat more productive than the last time any talks happened. But it's also highly unlikely that Putin will accept Trump's demand for a permanent ceasefire and a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine. The question now is what Putin will actually offer Trump and how Trump will react to it.

One development that seems to have come from the meeting is that both sides are talking about a possible meeting between Putin and Trump, perhaps as early as next week. Is this more of Putin's stalling, or a real indicator that some sort of solution is getting close? It's impossible to say. But it does seem like a good sign, at least.

Of course, any such ceasefire (whether permanent and total, or temporary or limited) has to also be approved by Ukraine. Bilateral negotiations between Russia and the U.S. are valuable, but the two countries can't decide what will happen next on their own -- Ukraine will have to get on board as well. This fact often gets lost in the analysis of what's happening between Trump and Putin.

So what could possibly come from a meeting between the two next week? Putin doesn't seem likely to agree to the U.S. (or Ukrainian) demands, he seems to (as always) be playing a very long game. So it might be expected that a meeting between Trump and Putin is announced before the deadline, with Trump then pushing the deadline out a bit. That's in the short term, at least.

Trump is threatening sanctions on both Russia and countries that still buy its oil. Today, he announced he would be doubling his tariff on India (from 25 percent to 50 percent) because they continue to buy Russia oil. Trump could slap the same sort of tariff on China, but he hasn't threatened doing so yet (at least not in any direct way). This would all be notable because it would be the first actions against Russia Trump has taken. And they're not going to be immediate -- Trump did pause the hike in tariffs for India by three weeks.

Senate Democrats just put out a report that castigates Trump for doing absolutely nothing to increase (or even properly maintain) even the existing sanctions on Russia. It notes:

From February 2022, when Putin directed his full-scale invasion, to January 2025, when Biden left office, the last administration issued more than 140 new rounds of sanctions to keep pace with Russia's evasion, the report states. Over six months in office, the Trump administration hasn't issued any, the report says.

The report accuses the administration of having failed to advance the extensive sanctions regime built over the first three years of Russia's full-scale invasion. That lapse, the authors argue, undercuts any future U.S. threats to tighten the screws on Russia's war machine.

. . .

"If Trump is serious about ending the war in Ukraine, he should start using the tools he already has," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, whose staff co-wrote the report, said in a statement.

Also, the head of the Ukrainian presidential office just wrote an article for the Washington Post recently, begging Trump to increase the pressure on Russia. It offered several very concrete ways Trump could do this:

Russia's military-industrial complex needs to be better targeted. Entities such as Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear agency, and Roscosmos, its space agency, are not neutral civilian institutions, but strategic enablers of Putin's war. Rosatom underpins nuclear weapons development and facilitates the occupation of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Roscosmos provides satellite imagery and communications that guide Russian missile strikes. Both agencies must be sanctioned in full and banned from cooperating with Western scientific and academic institutions.

More must also be done to cut off Russia's access to international finance. Disconnecting some Russian banks from SWIFT, the backbone of global financial communications, in 2022 was a milestone. But one major financial institution, Gazprombank, remains connected, serving as a major conduit for sanctioned trade, particularly in energy and defense-related goods. Gazprombank must be disconnected alongside any smaller financial institutions trying to fill the gap.

A full economic blockade is needed. Russia imports billions worth of microchips and electronics used in its drones and missiles through China and other smaller countries across Central Asia. These components often originate in the West but reach Russia via circuitous trade routes and financial loopholes. We are greatly encouraged by recent U.S. actions to crack down on sanctions evasion. The bipartisan Graham-Blumenthal bill marks a strong step toward imposing secondary sanctions on entities in third countries that help fund Russia's war machine.

The question is whether Trump will even threaten to do any of this stuff. His preferred method of conducting foreign policy is of the "when all you have is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail" sort: tariffs are the way to go, no matter what.

Putin, quite obviously, is content to string Trump along for as long as he can possibly get away with it. And he certainly took note of how Israel pledged a "Phase One" temporary ceasefire in Gaza, only to never seriously consider "Phase Two." When the ceasefire's time was up, Israel resumed the war once again. Putin may be thinking he could get away with a similar sort of plan.

What did leak out from today's meeting is that Putin could be offering a more-limited version of a ceasefire. And one that would give him a particular advantage:

Instead of the full truce that Trump has demanded for months, Putin was reportedly considering a partial ceasefire, possibly by ending the missile and drone attacks it has ramped up against Ukrainian cities in recent months. More than 6,700 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the first half of this year, according to the United Nations. Last week, Trump described Russia's attacks on Ukraine as "disgusting" and "a disgrace."

But there were no immediate indications from either side about whether Putin tried to deflect the sanctions on Russia's trading partners by offering a partial ceasefire.

A partial truce might have halted the deadly attacks on civilians but would not prevent Russia from advancing in eastern Ukraine, where it has been making slow but steady progress, gaining 886 square miles from the end of December to the end of June, according to data from the Institute for the Study of War think tank.

It would also have neutered Ukraine's most effective tool in the war: drone attacks on key Russian military facilities, including strategic air bases, bombers, spy planes, oil refineries, fuel and ammunition storage facilities and factories associated with military production.

This concept of an "air truce" is only rumored, at this point, but it's easy to see why Putin would agree to it -- without agreeing to stop any land-based attacks. It would also be a convenient way for Putin to halt any action by Trump, because he could string him along some more with the tantalizing prospect of a full ceasefire and an end to the whole war.

This has been Putin's game-plan all along, and so far it has worked. If Trump can be convinced that "a final deal is real close now" for another extended period of time, then Russia can go right on making battlefield progress in the meantime (although it would end the drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, at least -- for a while). How long could Putin continue to dangle the prize of a permanent end to the war in front of Trump to convince him not to impose any sanctions or tariffs on Russia? That's the real question here, and it might not be answered any time soon, deadline or not.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant