IN THE HOURS before Donald Trump picked up the phone on May 19th to speak to Vladimir Putin, European diplomats believed that they were inching closer to alignment with the Americans on Ukraine. The American president had advertised the call as “turkey time”, a last-chance call for the Kremlin to end the war or face pain in the form of tough new sanctions. By the time the two-hour call ended, and European leaders joined a debrief with Mr Trump, it became clear that no threat had been issued to the Russian leader. Mr Trump hinted he would instead simply walk away from the negotiating process if he could not get the two sides to agree quickly, which in the absence of new pressure now appears likely. “I think something’s going to happen,” Mr Trump told reporters, though without providing a shred of justification for this optimism. “And if it doesn’t, I’ll just back away and they’re going to have to keep going.”