US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he did not want a “wasted meeting” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin about ending the war in Ukraine.
"It didn't feel right to me. It didn't feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it, but we'll do it in the future,” Trump said as he announced the cancellation of the upcoming summit with Putin supposedly scheduled to be held in Budapest, Hungry in the coming weeks.
Trump explained that every time he speaks with his Russian counterpart, he has a good conversation and then “they don’t go anywhere”. The decision to cancel the meeting was made following a call on Monday between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Trump’s remarks follow a White House officials’ earlier statement that there were “no plans” for a Trump-Putin summit “in the immediate future”. Trump’s decision came on the heels of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks that the Kremlin is opposed to an immediate ceasefire proposed by Trump last week. Lavrov said Moscow was only interested in “long-term, sustainable peace”, stressing that the “root cause of the conflict” needed to be addressed, reflecting the Kremlin’s maximalist demands. European leaders released a statement on Tuesday, calling for freezing the current front line. Trump voiced support for the proposal.
Trump announced the plans to meet Putin one-on-one in Budapest on Thursday, following his “positive” phone call with the Russian leader. The surprise phone conversation preceded Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s third visit to the White House and the meeting with Trump.
Trump and Putin last met in Anchorage, Alaska in August, during a hastily organised summit that yielded no concrete results. The decision to shelve Trump-Putin summit will come as a relief for European leaders who have been accusing Putin of dragging feet over a peace agreement to end the fighting.
