Trump-Putin meeting in Budapest postponed, says U.S. official
Plans for President Donald Trump to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to discuss resolving the war in Ukraine are currently on hold, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
The meeting had been announced last week. It was supposed to take place in Budapest, although a date had not been set, News.Az reports citing foreign media.
The decision was made following a call between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The official wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov indicated Tuesday there was no sense of urgency for Trump and Putin to meet, saying that “preparation is needed, serious preparation.”
The back-and-forth over Trump’s plans is the latest bout of whiplash caused by his stutter-step efforts to resolve a conflict that has persisted for nearly four years.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders accused Putin of stalling for time to continue his invasion as diplomatic efforts took place. They also said they opposed any push to make Kyiv surrender land captured by Russian forces in return for peace, as Trump has on occasion suggested.
Eight European leaders as well as senior European Union officials said in a joint statement they intend to go ahead with plans to use Moscow’s billions of dollars (euros) of frozen assets abroad to help Kyiv win the war, despite some misgivings about the legality and consequences of such a step.
Zelenskyy noted that Putin returned to diplomacy and called Trump last week when facing the possibility that the U.S. would supply Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles.
But “as soon as the pressure eased a little, the Russians began to try to drop diplomacy, postpone the dialogue,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday in a Telegram post.
“We need to end this war, and only pressure will lead to peace,” he said.
The leaders’ statement laid down a marker by saying the leaders “remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force.”
Trump last month reversed his long-held position that Ukraine would have to concede land and suggested it could win back all the territory it has lost to Russia. However, after a phone call with Putin last week and a subsequent meeting with Zelenskyy on Friday, Trump shifted his position again and called on Kyiv and Moscow to “stop where they are” in the more than three-year war.
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