When President Donald Trump hung up the phone after his talk with Russia’s Vladimir Putin last week, he was so convinced there was enough progress made that he announced he was heading soon to Budapest for an in-person summit.

Five days later, the summit was off and new sanctions on Moscow — the first of Trump’s second administration — were on.

What happened in between was a steady realization by the president and top officials that Putin’s stance on ending the war had not significantly shifted from the last time the two met on a US air base in Alaska, according to US officials.

Putin’s continued strikes on civilians in Ukraine, his maximalist demands on Kyiv to bring the war to an end and his refusal to agree to an immediate ceasefire all added up, in Trump’s mind, to a clear signal that nothing really had changed.

“It just it didn’t feel right to me,” Trump said Wednesday. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I canceled it.”

The wholesale reversal was cheered by Trump’s European allies and many of the president’s supporters, and condemned as unhelpful by Putin. After months of threatening new measures on Russia, only to stop short, Trump has now gone further than ever before in punishing the country for its war in Ukraine.

“I just felt it was time,” Trump said at the White House moments after the new sanctions were announced. “We waited a long time.”

US sanctions Russia’s two largest oil companies and calls on Moscow to agree to immediate ceasefire

Whether Trump’s new stance is permanent, or simply a temporary phase, is an open question. He has repeatedly zigzagged in his approach to Putin since returning to office, often influenced by his phone conversations with the Russian leader. And new pressure on global oil prices could test his willingness to withstand the potential fallout for American consumers.

There was no single moment that shifted the president’s thinking, according to a senior White House official. Instead, his view evolved as he found himself repeatedly disappointed that Putin appeared no closer to agreeing to end the war.