Donald Trump has expressed confidence that he can broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, but Vladimir Putin has once again shown that he knows he holds ‘the cards’. Putin was an hour late for his Tuesday call with Trump and seemingly unbothered by the fact that he had kept the American president waiting.

The Russian leader was seen smirking and laughing off warnings about his tardiness as he met with members of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs congress ahead of the call. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the two-hour phone call was meant to begin at 9am EST, but when the time rolled around, Putin was still at the conference and appeared in no rush to leave.

White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino posted on X just before noon that Trump’s call with Putin began at 10am and was ‘going well, and still in progress’. Trump claimed the call went ‘great’ and the White House White House described it as the first step in a ‘movement to peace’, revealing during the call Putin had agreed to an immediate pause in strikes against energy infrastructure in Ukraine. Moscow said the leaders discussed staging a series of ice hockey games between players from the the NHL and KHL during the lengthy call, claiming Trump supported Putin’s idea to organize games in the US and Russia.  Washington’s report of the call did not mention talks involving hockey, and the NHL learned of the idea after it was over.

Despite the alleged success of the call, both Russia and Kyiv launched air attacks overnight that struck civilian targets including infrastructure. There has also been no indication that Putin has backed away from his conditions for a prospective peace deal – which are fiercely opposed by Kyiv.