Pursuing Peace” — plastered on the wall, President Donald Trump welcomed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for a summit in Alaska on Friday whose results remained entirely unclear once it abruptly ended.

But, given the pushback he got from the Kremlin, Trump did not have room to promise much more. Last week, after his summit with Putin in Alaska, he had already set aside his main source of leverage over the Russians—the threat of sanctions and tariffs that could weaken Putin’s economy. “We don’t have to think about that right now,” Trump remarked.