At the height of the Iraq war, bloggers coined the term “Friedman unit” in reference to the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s habit of claiming that the next six months would be critical in determining the outcome of the conflict.

Everything has sped up quite a bit in our post-Twitter era, so perhaps it’s appropriate that the Ukraine war equivalent — the Trump unit — is only two weeks. President Donald Trump said last month he would give Russian President Vladimir Putin a “couple of weeks” to take serious steps toward ending the war before he imposed new penalties on Russia. “I’ll know in two weeks what I’m going to do,” he told CNN. Trump has previously given Putin two more weeks in April, May, and July. (This is not the only issue that Trump has promised to resolve in a fortnight.)

Trump had promised to end the war within 24 hours of taking office, and eight months later, there appear to be two constants: Trump’s frustration that Putin might be “tapping me along” as he continues to launch attacks on Ukrainian cities, and his seemingly unshakeable faith that Putin is serious about making peace — in which case, a resolution to the war may be just around the corner.

“I think [Putin] wants to make a deal for me, you understand, as crazy as it sounds,” he told French President Emanuel Macron in a hot mic moment at the White House on August 18. Two weeks later, he declared himself “very disappointed” in Putin.

None of this is to say that talks with Russia are pointless; even the most fleeting chance of a negotiated outcome should be explored. But the unfortunate fact is that there’s a high likelihood this war will continue for quite some time.

Where are each nation’s red lines?

The biggest change in the war since Trump took office is that the two sides are talking. US officials have been holding direct talks with their Russian counterparts over Ukraine since February, a reversal of the Joe Biden-era mantra that there would be no talks “about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Russia and Ukraine have also held their first direct talks since the first weeks of the war, agreeing to several prisoner swaps, but making little progress toward a ceasefire.

There’s been some softening of the Ukrainian position. It was once an article of faith in Kyiv that it would not agree to an end to the war until Russian troops were expelled from all of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory. But now, Ukrainian leaders are pushing for a ceasefire that would leave a significant portion of its territory under Russian occupation, with hopes it could be regained later. Battlefield realities probably would have dictated this shift no matter who was in the White House, but Trump’s desire for a quick end to the war, and Ukraine’s need to keep him mollified, probably hastened it.

As for Russia, while even Putin may accept now that his military is unlikely to topple Ukraine’s government entirely, it’s not at all clear that........

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