Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor and a foreign affairs columnist at POLITICO Europe.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had hoped to capitalize on his warming relations with U.S. President Donald Trump to secure a supply of U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles — weapons Kyiv believes could be a game-changer and deliver a decisive blow to the Kremlin’s war economy.

Fresh off successfully brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, surely Trump would have the appetite to give Ukraine what it needs to force Russian President Vladimir Putin into getting serious about negotiations.

But that isn’t what happened.

Zelenskyy’s meeting in the White House was perfectly cordial — Trump used that word himself to characterize their encounter. There was no frostiness, and no return to the nastiness of last February’s now infamous Oval Office brawl. Zelenskyy learned his lesson thoroughly on that score and now knows deference is obligatory when approaching “daddy” Trump.

The meeting was, however, fluffed, mainly because Ukraine was in too much of a hurry.

“It wasn’t a bad meeting, just a victim of poor timing and inflated expectations,” said one Republican foreign-policy insider who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. But it could have been much more productive if Zelenskyy had readjusted his thinking and rejigged his agenda after the lengthy phone call Trump had with Putin the day before.

During that two-and-a-half hour call, Trump teased Putin with the prospects of supplying Ukraine with Tomahawks: “I did actually say, would you mind if I gave a couple of thousand Tomahawks to your opposition? I did say that,” the U.S. president told reporters. “He didn’t like the idea.” And the outcome was an agreement to meet at another summit — this time in Budapest — with Trump once again seemingly persuaded that Putin might be ready to end the war.

The Ukrainian leader doesn’t believe “Putin is ready just to finish this war,” as he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview Sunday. Nonetheless, Putin’s call should have prompted Zelenskyy and his team to recalibrate, dial down their expectations and, above all, downgrade their push for Cruise missiles, said the insider. “There was no way Trump was going to agree to Tomahawk acquisitions ahead of his meeting with Putin in Budapest.”

But Ukraine ignored the counsel of its Republican friends in Washington — many of whom are skeptical Trump will agree to give Ukraine Tomahawks under any circumstances, for fear of escalation and drawing the U.S. deeper into the war. That’s not even considering the Pentagon’s worries about the U.S.’s own stockpiles, which Trump himself mentioned to reporters on Friday.

By failing to drop the Tomahawk request, Ukraine squandered an opportunity to focus on a slew of other crucial items — foremost among them, air-to-air missiles for their F-16 and MiG warplanes and surface-to-air interceptor missiles for Patriot air-defense systems. Both are needed to shoot down drones and ballistic missiles, and Ukraine is desperately short of them because of the record airstrikes Russia is now mounting.

The focus on Tomahawks also distracted from other key asks, such as getting Trump’s approval for the use of immobilized Russian sovereign assets to fund Ukraine’s defense.

For his part, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is in favor of this proposal. The U.S. only holds $7 billion in Russian assets, but the EU’s big three in the G7 — Germany, France and Italy — want Japan and America actively involved, as they worry that tapping into the €140 billion in Russian assets held in Europe could undermine the euro’s global credibility. If Washington and Tokyo were to take similar action, their fears would be allayed.

There was also only limited progress on discussions about Ukraine importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the U.S., now that Russian airstrikes on Ukraine’s natural gas infrastructure have increased in both intensity and frequency. So far, Ukraine’s state oil and gas firm Naftogaz has bought around 0.5 billion cubic meters of U.S. LNG, but more will be needed if the country is to endure the winter. And earlier this month, Ukrainian Minister of Energy Svitlana Hrynchuk said Kyiv was aiming to increase its overall gas imports by 30 percent.

Along these lines, the country’s Minister of Economy Oleksii Sobolev noted last week that Ukraine was “considering mechanisms to finance the purchase of American LNG and compressor equipment.” But according to an official from America’s export credit agency the Export-Import Bank, who asked to remain anonymous as they’re not authorized to speak with the media, these discussions are now bogged down because Ukraine is objecting to the rather restrictive loan terms being offered. And the bank has only limited legal maneuver to amend the terms.

In fact, the huge delegation of Ukrainian ministers and officials — including Zelenskyy’s powerful Chief-of-Staff Andriy Yermak and Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko — sent to Washington ahead of Friday’s White House meeting struck out across the board, failing to finalize several major agreements involving both the U.S. government and the private sector. 

“The idea was that there would be massive things readied, including some agreements with major U.S. defense companies and energy players, all to be inked during the White House meeting,” said the Republican insider. But in the end, nothing was oven-ready.

“Unfortunately, nothing really concrete was agreed during the entire week,” another Republican foreign-policy adviser concurred. He also said the misguided focus on Tomahawks was only part of the problem — the other was the timing of Zelenskyy’s visit and the overall Ukrainian lobbying push in Washington.

“We had urged them to delay,” he said. It was important that Svyrydenko and the economy officials were in Washington because of the annual IMF and World Bank meetings, but the rest of the lobbying effort should have been delayed for a week or so. And certainly, Zelenskyy’s offer of exchanging Ukrainian drone technology for Tomahawks was far too premature.

For one, the Trump administration was still very much focused on the Middle East. Plus, with the government shutdown and the blame game over the budgetary battle between Democrats and Republicans, there wasn’t enough oxygen for Ukraine.

In their defense, the adviser added, there’s rising alarm in Kyiv about how Ukraine will make it through this winter — likely the worst of the war so far. Zelenskyy hinted at this worry on Sunday, telling NBC that because Russia isn’t winning on the battlefield, it’s escalating airstrikes on infrastructure. “He’s using missiles and drones on our — he wants disaster — energy disaster during this winter by attacking us, each day [with] 500 Iranian drones and 20-30 missiles,” he said.

And the Republican adviser agrees: “There’s a real danger is that Ukraine is headed for an energy catastrophe if the Russian strikes on the energy infrastructure persist.”