Even by the normal gushing standards of the Trump administration, the US president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff did not hold back when he and Jared Kushner met Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin for three hours of talks on Saturday.

As Putin approached for a handshake, Witkoff – making his eighth trip to Moscow in a mere 19 months – put his hand on his heart, symbolising his respect for Russia’s brutal dictator. “Thank you so much for having us”, he said, as though he and Kushner had been invited to a birthday party rather than the start of yet another round of possibly fruitless negotiations aimed at resolving the Kremlin’s war on its Ukrainian neighbour.

“When we retire we’ll have all these incredible stories and incredible memories, and yours will be right at the top of it all”, Witkoff enthused. Putin, smiling like the cat who had made off with the cream, then made it immediately apparent that he was running the meeting and consigned the small talk to the ash-heap of history.

“The situation is difficult… you have been enjoying our full trust and it has been quite convenient to work with you,” Putin told his guests in remarks made before press cameras were escorted from the room. He invited them to “convey my best wishes and words of sincere gratitude to the President of the US” but then went on to note, “I know that he might be entering a difficult street, but anyway he will not stop trying to resolve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict”.

Whether Putin meant to indicate that Trump’s effort to secure Russia’s support for any kind of lasting ceasefire in Ukraine is a “difficult street” or was more broadly indicating the challenges Trump faces in November’s mid-term elections was unclear. Perhaps the Russian leader meant both, knowing that he and America’s voters are equally likely to give Trump short shrift in the days and weeks ahead.

Witkoff thanked Putin for agreeing not to launch any attacks on Kyiv for 72 hours, a blessing not least because he and Kushner were heading to the Ukrainian capital for talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky. Astonishingly, this is the first time that either of the two well-travelled envoys has set foot in the Ukrainian capital since Trump returned to power and comes at a moment when Prime Minister Andy Burnham and other European leaders are urging Trump to align himself more solidly behind Zelensky and his cause.

Ukrainian journalists noted that Putin’s description of the military pause was backdated to midnight on 5 September, twenty-four hours earlier than Ukraine’s understanding of the agreement that will also see Kyiv’s forces hold off from launching any strikes on Moscow. They claimed Moscow had violated its own truce, by launching a series of attacks on Ukrainian airports, including one where Kushner and Witkoff are expected to land.

Putin also indicated that he had rejected a separate Ukrainian push for a “broader three day ceasefire”. “But we never agreed on that with them”. He did promise to do “everything within our power to ensure the safety of the negotiation process and the mediators, including you, and perhaps those accompanying you”, essentially suggesting that the lives of the US team lay entirely in his hands.

Nothing emerged publicly from Saturday’s meeting to suggest any kind of breakthrough, even though the White House described the talks with Putin as making “substantive plans for next steps” that will only be revealed in “coming weeks”.

That suggests no effort by Putin to provide Trump with the immediate lifeboat he is seeking to end the Ukraine war in time for America’s midterms.  With the US war on Iran also unresolved, Trump and his fellow Republicans remain set to traverse the election campaign without any significant achievements to trumpet regarding either conflict.

Putin has long played Witkoff and Kushner like a violin, raising hopes of some kind of possible breakthrough, and then gleefully dashing them sometimes hours later.

His face-to-face summit meeting in Alaska with Trump in August last year blew up spectacularly, with the Russian leader giving his opposite number nothing to proclaim. The meeting is best remembered for Trump’s decision to invite Putin to ride alongside him in “The Beast” at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, which represented quite an arrival for a Russian leader who had not been permitted to set foot on American soil for a decade.

“Incredible stories and incredible memories” will indeed abound. But most of them may be told by the Russians, as they explain to their friends and loved ones how they toyed with Trump and his representatives like a cat with a mouse, and kept slaughtering Ukrainians with impunity.