BIRMINGHAM: Vladimir Putin has called Donald Trump’s bluff.

After more than two-and-a-half hours on the phone on Tuesday (Mar 18), the United States and Russian presidents agreed to precious little – and certainly not to anything in the proposed 30-day ceasefire the US more or less imposed on Ukraine a week ago.

If anything, the readouts of the call by the White House and the Kremlin suggest that a breakthrough that can end the fighting in Ukraine and potentially lead to an actual settlement is still far away.

WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE UKRAINE?

This is not to say that nothing was agreed. The Kremlin readout of the call notes an agreement on a prisoner exchange – 175 on each side – and a 30-day stop of attacks against energy infrastructure. Ukraine has been facing a harsh winter, with almost all of its non-nuclear power generation taken out by Russian attacks in the last three years.

Both are potentially important confidence-building measures, but they fall short of the complete, if temporary, cessation of violence that Mr Trump had allegedly tried to achieve.

They are measures that change nothing fundamental on the ground. The war will continue for now.

Mr Putin is not ready yet to freeze the frontlines. He is clearly still confident that he can drive the remaining Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region. He might even consider that he still has the upper hand in the land war inside Ukraine or that he can regain the initiative and capture more territory before a ceasefire is agreed.

A BIG GAMBLE FOR VLADIMIR PUTIN

In offering so few concessions, it is likely that Mr Putin has now confronted Mr Trump directly and the US president will now have to weigh his options carefully.

The Kremlin readout suggested that Mr Putin has not budged on any of his long-stated maximum demands to end the war in Ukraine: Not his territorial demands for the control of four annexed regions and certainly not the demilitarisation of Ukraine, including its non-membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and restricted size of its armed forces.

Importantly, Mr Trump seemingly lacked a contingency plan for this outcome.

Rebuffing the American proposal was always going to be a big gamble for Mr Putin – one that risks the US imposing further sanctions on Russia or even boosting American military support to Ukraine as a way of exerting pressure.

THE BALL IS IN DONALD TRUMP’S COURT

A week after the US-Ukraine deal put the “ball in Russia’s court”, Mr Trump now finds it in his court. Will he put more pressure on Ukraine to accede to Russia’s demands or will he resort to putting pressure on Russia?

The former is more likely than the latter, given how Trump has played his cards so far. But there are limits as to how successful this approach will be.

In fact, Mr Trump might come to realise soon that he has reached the end of the road with Ukraine and that pressure on Russia will be the only way to move forward if he is as serious about peace as he has insisted.

Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham and Head of the Department of Political Science and International Studies.