Chris

That’s what the Americans call ‘blowing smoke up his ass’.

In the real world it is (hopefully) clear that Trump is trying to treat this as a property deal, with kickbacks for his handler pal Vlad and lucrative contracts for whichever American companies his bounteous grace bestows them upon.

Steve Witkoff is too stupid to see he’s being played for time, however, and the likelihood is that Putin thinks he’s doing better on the battlefield than he is, because he lives in a bunker surrounded by generals who will only tell him what he wants to hear.