Trump likes Putin and Russia. Trump wants to "get along" with Putin and with Russia. When under intense pressure, he makes vague threats about punishing Russia which he then ignores, or converts into diplomatic favours for Russia. None of this is likely to change.

Trump is both a bully and a coward. Americans are falling for the bully--Ukraine has to force the coward to the surface. The change is in the USA, not Ukraine.

The Kremlin appears to think, understandably, that it is now master and the US is now the vassal. That's why Witkoff was kept waiting for 8 hours by Putin; it's why Russia bombed Ukrainian infrastructure immediately after Trump said they'd agreed an infrastructure ceasefire.

By publicly humiliating the White House, Putin is demonstrating to the rest of the world that he has power over Trump and thus over the whole of the US. By trying to recreate a world of great powers, the Trump administration has made the US the subordinate of China's subordinate.

Everything we can hear and see and everything we know about the dominant figures in the Trump administration indicates that the talks are being seen as a mechanism for building an informal US-Russia alliance. Attempting to carve up Ukraine is part of how this is being done.