I honestly think Trump is just impressed by Putin. Like he loves the power that Putin wields and likes and wants that. Trump has consistently expressed his admiration of unconstrained power in all forms. It's not just a Putin thing, though I think there is a little extra going on with Putin.
Otherwise, I think what Trump has said about Ukraine is more or less what he believes and wants. He wants there to be peace, quickly, so that he can be known as a peace maker. He wants to be known as the person who can do the undoable. His henchmen repeat it endlessly - "only Donald Trump could bring peace here". He does not care about the details for Ukraine, and he doesn't really care about the details for Europe - he's wanted to cut loose from Europe since the first term.
In addition, there's probably quite a lot of personal apathy towards Zelensky specifically.
Finally it's possible that his China hawks are also shaping his base tendencies to try to deliver a Russia-China split. But I don't think that Trump really believes in that, it's just the people in his admin trying to make something of this situation. And I don't really believe that even a peace favourable to Putin can deliver the type of split that the China hawks might dream of, at least within this term.
