The prospects of a ceasefire happening soon in Ukraine were always pretty slim. Now they seem to be receding into oblivion. Without some strong and decisive action by Donald Trump, the situation in Ukraine does not look likely to change in any meaningful way any time soon. The war will continue, people will keep dying, and Vladimir Putin will feel no compunction to bring an end to any of it. That seems to be the emerging reality.

Trump has set multiple deadlines for Putin to change things. All of them have passed. Nothing has changed. Now Trump is holding out hope that Putin will meet one-on-one with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and then there will be a trilateral meeting with Trump added (so he can swoop in, claim all the credit, and renew his push to get a Nobel Peace Prize). Trump has vaguely set a deadline of two or possibly three weeks for all of this to at least be scheduled, if not actually happen. This deadline will probably be ignored by Putin just like all the others. Maybe Putin will set up some low-level meeting with Russian and Ukrainian negotiators and claim progress, in an effort to mollify Trump. Maybe some prisoners of war will be exchanged. Putin can point to this and claim progress, without actually making any towards ending the war. The chances are good that this tactic would work, after all. Or maybe Putin will just endlessly stall without the slightest intent of ever meeting with Zelenskyy.

What will happen then? Will Trump just walk away from the issue entirely? That is a distinct possibility. After all, there's no hard deadline, so Trump can deploy one of his favorite dodges, by claiming the meetings are "about to happen, we'll probably have an announcement in the next two weeks." That two weeks will then forever remain two weeks into the future -- it will never actually come to pass.

Two weeks is a very long time for Trump. While they pass, he'll be spewing distractions at his usual firehose volume, so we'll all doubtlessly be talking about something else two weeks from now (probably several other things). This Friday some of the Epstein files will be released to a congressional committee, so documents may start trickling out to the public. That will be a monumental distraction right there. Trump is turning Washington D.C. into an armed camp, which could provide more distractions (depending on what happens). Plus there are always dozens of other things Trump could do to cause a media frenzy.

So two weeks from now, how many reporters will be leaning in to ask the White House: "Trump's timeline is up -- so what is he going to do now that Putin has refused to set up future meetings with either him or Zelenskyy?"

The simple truth is that Putin is not going to do anything without some pressure being applied. He set up last Friday's summit to avoid one of Trump's deadlines, but in that summit meeting he apparently convinced Trump that issuing any threats towards Russia would mean the war would never end. Ever since, Trump has barely even hinted at any possible consequences if Putin continues to stall.

Eventually, even Donald Trump will have to face the fact that Putin has no interest in ending the war any time soon. Somehow Putin has convinced Trump that he is tired of the war and wishes it would end, but no matter what Trump believes, Putin's actions say otherwise. Putin doesn't care about "stopping the killing" (which Trump keeps referring to as his own overarching goal); what Putin cares about is crushing Ukraine once and for all. As several have noted, Putin doesn't want "peace in Ukraine," he instead wants a piece of Ukraine. Actually, while that's verbally amusing, it's inaccurate -- because what Putin really wants is all of Ukraine. He wants it to be a part of Russia or at least led by a puppet government controlled from Moscow. His demands make this crystal clear, in fact.

Although it was all announced with fanfare, Putin has not actually agreed (as Trump said he did) to the West providing any sort of security guarantees to Ukraine. Putin's never going to agree to what would in essence be Ukraine joining NATO on a de facto basis, even with a diplomatic cover story that they hadn't officially (de jure) joined NATO. Putin's always going to react to that with a big: "Nyet!"

The only path forward (instead of Putin's endless stalling game) is going to require some pressure. That much seems obvious, at this point. Trump has many options to apply such pressure. He could work with Europe to free up $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, and hand it over to Ukraine to buy some more weapons. That's a lot of money -- enough to change the military equation on the battlefield. Trump could tighten the sanctions that Joe Biden applied to Russia, to plug up some loopholes that Putin has been exploiting. Or Trump could use his favorite tactic of levying tariffs.

In the weeks leading up to the dual summits, Trump seemed to genuinely get annoyed with Putin. He started using blustery language that he never had before towards his perceived buddy. Heading to the summit, Trump even warned that there would be "very serious consequences" if Putin didn't immediately agree to a ceasefire. But for all his loud talk about such consequences, they evaporated the moment Putin appeared before Trump on the red carpet before him. It was all empty bluster in the end. Trump's "big tough guy" talk was no match for Putin's dominance.

Other than vague bluster about "very serious consequences," to date Trump has only taken one step towards applying any possible leverage with Russia. One of the threats that Trump was talking about before the summit happened was to economically punish Russia indirectly, by slapping additional tariffs on countries that continue to purchase Russian oil. There are two of these that are big enough to matter: India and China. For a totally unrelated reason, Trump got annoyed by the leader of India, so he first slapped the country with a 25 percent tariff and then announced he'd be doubling this to 50 percent ("within a few weeks" -- this hasn't actually happened yet) because of India's purchase of Russian oil. India, however, is not backing down and seems ready to take this massive tariff in stride. They announced they would continue to buy Russian oil even with the new sanctions.

But Trump hasn't said a word about levying the same 25 percent tariff on China. China is still in talks with Trump over tariff rates, and there is currently a 30 percent tariff on all Chinese goods shipped to the United States. Raising this to 55 percent would be a major escalation -- but it would throw a monkey wrench into the talks which are already happening, which is likely why Trump hasn't issued any such threat. Putin must see this and conclude that Trump's hands are tied when it comes to his biggest oil customer, and he'd likely be right.

The whole point of economic sanctions is to crush an opponent's economy. The Russian economy is already on pretty shaky ground as a result of the war, the Western semi-embargo on Russian oil, and all the other sanctions placed on Russia by Biden. More stringent sanctions/tariffs might just tip the Russian economy into a death spiral. That'd be the intent of them, at any rate.

There are, however, no guarantees that economic sanctions would work. Sometimes they do, but often times they don't, at least if you measure success by whether the country's leadership changes anything in response. So even if Trump did get serious and follow through with his threats, there's simply no guarantee it would work.

But at least the attempt would be made. Not imposing new penalties on Russia surely isn't going to work, that much seems pretty clear. Putin isn't going to magically wake up one day and think to himself: "You know, Trump is right -- I think I'll just end the war." Putting pressure on him to do so might change the equation and it might not, but it's certainly worth a try absent any moves towards peace by Putin in the meantime.

If Trump does decide to just wash his hands of the entire matter and ignore it, this may prove to be too much even for his own Republicans in Congress. There's a bill sitting in the Senate that reportedly has the support of over 80 senators that would impose crippling sanctions both on Russia (100 percent) and on any country that continues to buy its oil (500 percent). If Trump just sits back and ignores Putin's stalling, then senators like Lindsey Graham and John Thune may eventually decide to make their own move by passing the bill and sending it over to the House. This would essentially be a large vote of "no confidence" in Trump's ability to effectively threaten Putin into changing his ways. But such an open revolt by Republicans hasn't happened yet, and may never happen (since they are all terrified of going against Trump's wishes).

As things stand, Trump has created his own doctrine, when it comes to Russia and Vladimir Putin. It is an update of Teddy Roosevelt's famous foreign policy theme. Because all Trump has managed so far is to "speak loudly and carry no stick whatsoever." If Trump's tactics don't change, then nothing is going to change in Ukraine at all. And Putin will continue to laugh at Trump, knowing he is no more than a paper tiger when he is confronted by a real strongman.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant