BERLIN – Ukrainian and European officials exhaled after scrambling to soften President Donald Trump’s surprise Kremlin-friendly peace plan. But an uncomfortable reality looms over the diplomatic frenzy: It will all come down to what Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to accept.

The Russian leader has signaled that he is prepared to continue fighting the war, despite high battlefield losses and economic pain at home, with the aim of forcing Ukraine to embrace demands that would subordinate the nation to Russia.

The realities on the ground, analysts say, give Putin little reason to temper his terms.

Ukraine is relinquishing territory at a quickening pace. It is struggling with a domestic corruption scandal. It is also running low on money and soldiers, as well as losing the patience of the United States.

For the Russian leader, holding out for a broader Ukrainian collapse could deliver even bigger concessions.

“The essence of his war is to weaken Ukraine,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“Ukraine itself is in an everdeepening crisis, and sooner or later they’ll break — he knows that clearly, and that’s all,” Stanovaya said. “He doesn’t need to know anything else.”

Putin has said he wants a binding guarantee that Ukraine will not enter NATO, a pledge that the Western military alliance won’t expand farther eastward, limits on Ukraine’s military strength and special protections for the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, among other demands. Talks in Alaska this summer centered on Putin’s wish to take the entirety of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, including parts still held by Ukraine.

In recent days, European officials expressed dismay at points in the plan that would constrain NATO and give Moscow power over European security .

Moscow has dismissed as unproductive European counterproposals that circulated in recent days, and suggested that any plan departing from the fundamental understandings that the United States and Russia reached during the Alaska summit would be a nonstarter.

There are signs that Putin wouldn’t even have agreed to the original 28-point plan that caused an outcry for its Russia tilt when it emerged last week.

Moscow may be hoping that if the latest round of diplomacy doesn’t result in a peace agreement, it will lead the United States to break off all support for Ukraine, possibly hastening a Ukrainian disintegration.

“Putin still wants it all,” said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“But the main thing he wants is Ukraine in his orbit. And if he can’t have Ukraine, no one can.”

Bergmann noted that similar bursts of diplomacy this year fizzled out.

“In some ways, this is a merry-go-round,” he said.

“With every initiative, you get on the merry-go-round, there is a flurry of activity, it looks like you are going somewhere and eventually it stops and you get off in the same place that you were, which is the war just continuing on.”