Plans for Trump-Putin Summit Postponed Days After Budapest Talks Proposed
There are "no arrangements" for US President President Trump to meet Russia's Vladimir Putin "in the immediate future", a White House official has stated.
This past week the US president said he and the Kremlin leader would hold talks in Budapest within two weeks to discuss the war in Ukraine.
A planning session between America's top diplomat Secretary Rubio and his opposite number Foreign Minister Lavrov was planned for this week - but the administration clarified the two had had a "positive" conversation and that a meeting was not "necessary".
The White House withheld any more details on the reason the negotiations had been postponed.
Earlier Events
The US president had raised the possibility of a Budapest summit via telephone with Putin, a just prior to hosting Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House.
Some reports suggested his talks with Zelensky had been a "heated exchange", with insiders claiming the president had pressured him to relinquish large areas of eastern Ukraine as part of a deal with Moscow.
Yet, on this week the American president embraced a truce plan backed by Ukraine and European leaders to halt the conflict on the current front line.
"Freeze the lines where it stands," he remarked.
Moscow has consistently objected against freezing the present battle positions.
Moscow was solely focused on "permanent resolution", Russia's foreign minister stated on Tuesday, implying that freezing the front line would simply constitute a temporary ceasefire.
Negotiating Stances
The "underlying reasons" of the war required resolution, Lavrov emphasized, using Moscow's terminology for a set of maximalist demands that involve the acceptance of full Russian sovereignty over the Donbas as well as the disarmament of the country – a impossible condition for Kyiv and its European partners.
The Ukrainian president said conversations concerning the battle positions were the "start of negotiations" but that Moscow was "employing all tactics" to avoid diplomacy.
He further commented the sole subject that could make Moscow "take notice" was that of the supply of long-range weapons to the Ukrainian military.
Weapons Discussions
Putin's spontaneous discussion with Trump recently came ahead of reports that the US was preparing to send long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukrainian forces that could theoretically target inside Russia.
The Ukrainian leader said it was the Tomahawks issue that had pressured the Kremlin to participate in talks. The talk about the missiles had proven to be a "valuable contribution" in international relations", he commented.