US President Donald Trump said he had shelved plans for a summit in Budapest with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on the Ukraine war because he did not want a “wasted” meeting.
Mr Trump’s reversal came just days after he announced that he would meet Mr Putin in the Hungarian capital within two weeks, following what he called a productive phone call to end Russia’s war.
The US leader pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to give up the eastern Donbas region in exchange for peace during “tense” talks last Friday in Washington, a senior Ukrainian official told AFP.
But yesterday, a White House official said that there were now “no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future” despite the Budapest announcement.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump met in Alaska in August
“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting,” Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked why the Mr Putin encounter had been put on ice. “I don’t want to have a waste of time, so I’ll see what happens.”
Asked by an AFP journalist what had changed his mind, Mr Trump said: “A lot of things are happening on the war front. And we’ll be notifying you over the next two days as to what we’re doing.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also called off an expected meeting to arrange the Budapest summit after speaking by phone on Monday, the White House said.
‘Going in circles’
Mr Trump has counted on personal chemistry with Mr Putin to reach a Ukraine peace deal, but has found himself frustrated time and again by the Russian leader.
Ukraine and its European allies, meanwhile, have been left scrambling to keep up with the mercurial US president.
Mr Zelensky’s talks with Mr Trump at the White House last week were “not easy,” the senior Ukrainian official told AFP, adding that diplomatic efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war felt like they were being “dragged out” and “going in circles.”
Mr Trump called last week for both Russia and Ukraine to stop the war at their current battle lines, and publicly made no references to Ukraine giving up territory.
Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky speak during a Bilateral Lunch at the White House
But when asked if Mr Trump urged Mr Zelensky to pull out of land that Ukraine still controlled – one of Mr Putin’s key demands – the Ukrainian official said: “Yes, that’s true.”
Mr Zelensky left the meeting empty-handed after Mr Trump, who spoke with Mr Putin the day before, denied his request for long-range Tomahawk missiles and pressured him into making a deal.
Ukraine considers the Donbas – a largely industrial area spanning its eastern Lugansk and Donetsk regions – an inseparable part of its territory and has rejected the idea of ceding it many times.
‘Line of contact’
The Kremlin said there was no “precise” date for any new meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Putin, who held talks in Alaska in August but failed to reach a breakthrough on Ukraine.
European leaders have rejected the idea of Ukraine giving up land – instead backing the proposal that fighting should be frozen on the current front lines.
In a joint statement published yesterday, leaders including France’s Emmanuel Macron, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Britain’s Keir Starmer warned that Russia was not “serious about peace.”
“We strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” the statement said.
A home was destroyed following a Russian drone strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine
NATO leader Mark Rutte was heading to Washington yesterday for a meeting with Mr Trump, the military alliance said in a statement.
EU leaders are then set to close ranks in support of Ukraine at a Brussels summit tomorrow – followed a day later by a “coalition of the willing” meeting of European leaders in London to discuss the next steps to help Ukraine.
Mr Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, describing it as a “special military operation” to demilitarise the country and prevent the expansion of NATO.
Russia now occupies around a fifth of Ukrainian territory – much of it ravaged by fighting – while tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers have been killed.