The meeting between the two leaders was announced five days ago by Trump himself and was due to take place in Budapest within two weeks
Donald Trump will no longer meet with Vladimir Putin “in the immediate future”, said a White House official cited by Reuters. The news comes after a phone call between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
Although the phone call “was productive”, according to the same White House official, the decision was made not to have an “immediate meeting” between the two presidents. , Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that Trump’s call for a ceasefire contradicts the terms of the agreements Trump made with Putin in Alaska.
The White House confirms the postponement of the meeting in Budapest, but made no mention of a diplomatic dispute. What is certain is that Russia rejects Trump’s call for a freeze on front-line fighting in Ukraine – the Kremlin thus signals that it has not significantly changed its demands for peace, after Trump said last week that he believed the Russian president wanted an agreement.
According to Reuters, Russia sent a document over the weekend highlighting its conditions for peace in Ukraine, conditions that were reaffirmed this Tuesday in the phone call and which ended up resulting in the announcement of the postponement of the summit in Budapest.
A source familiar with the matter said US officials felt, following the Rubio-Lavrov phone call, that the Russian position had not evolved far enough beyond its maximalist stance. The same source said it is likely that Rubio and Lavrov will speak again this week.
This Tuesday, Sergei Lavrov had already rejected the hypothesis of a ceasefire: “If we simply stop, it will mean forgetting the original causes of the conflict. Now we hear from Washington that we must stop immediately and that we must not discuss anything further”, he added, according to El Mundo.
On Thursday last week, after one with Vladimir Putin, Trump said he and the Russian president would hold talks in Budapest within two weeks to discuss the war in Ukraine.
“In fact, I believe that success in the Middle East will help in our negotiations to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. President Putin thanked the first lady, Melania, for her involvement with the children. He was very grateful and said that this will continue”, said the American leader shortly after the phone call with Putin. “I believe great progress was made with today’s phone conversation.”
Yuri Ushakov, advisor to the Russian president, then said that the two countries “immediately” began preparing the meeting between the two leaders. “The presidents discussed the possibility of holding another personal meeting. This is indeed a very important point. It was agreed that representatives of the two countries will immediately deal with the preparation of the meeting, which can be organized, for example, in Budapest,” said Ushakov, quoted by Tass.
The day after the phone call with Putin, Vladimir Zelensky. The Ukrainian delegation went to Washington with the hope of returning with guarantees of delivery of the long-range Tomahawk missiles, but ended up leaving the White House empty-handed and with the feeling that the US president had adopted many of the points defended by Putin, even those that contradicted past statements by Trump himself about the recent weaknesses demonstrated by Russia. European sources guarantee that Trump told Zelensky that Ukraine was losing the war and that he said: “If [Putin] wants, he will destroy you.”
Despite this, the US president considered the possibility of Washington sending Tomahawk cruise missiles.
