Donald Trump has said he did not want a “wasted meeting” after a plan to have face-to-face talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine were put on hold.
The US president indicated that a key sticking point remained Moscow’s refusal to cease fighting along the current front line, in remarks at the White House on Tuesday.
Earlier, a White House official had said there were “no plans” for a Trump-Putin meeting “in the immediate future”, after Trump said on Thursday that the two would hold talks in Budapest within two weeks.
Key differences between US and Russian proposals for peace became increasingly clear this week, appearing to have dashed chances of a summit.
Trump and Putin last met in Alaska in August, during a hastily organised summit which yielded no concrete results.
The White House decision to shelve plans for a second Trump-Putin meeting may be seen as an attempt to avoid another similar scenario.
“I guess the Russians wanted too much and it became evident for the Americans that there will be no deal for Trump in Budapest,” a senior European diplomat told Reuters.
A preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was due to be held this week – but the White House said the two had had a “productive” call and that a meeting was no longer “necessary”.
On Monday, Trump embraced a ceasefire proposal backed by Kyiv and European leaders to freeze the conflict on the current front line.
“Let it be cut the way it is,” he said. “I said: cut and stop at the battle line. Go home. Stop fighting, stop killing people.”
Russia has repeatedly pushed back against freezing the current line of contact.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the idea had been put to the Russians repeatedly but that “the consistency of Russia’s position doesn’t change” – referring to Moscow’s insistence on the complete withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the embattled eastern regions.
Moscow was only interested in “long-term, sustainable peace”, Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday, implying that freezing the front line would only amount to a temporary ceasefire.
The “root causes of the conflict” needed to be addressed, Lavrov said, using Kremlin shorthand for a series of maximalist demands that include the recognition of full Russian sovereignty over the Donbas as well as the demilitarisation of Ukraine – a non-starter for Kyiv and its European partners.
European leaders released a statement with Zelensky earlier on Tuesday saying that any talks on ending the war in Ukraine should start with freezing the current front line and accused Russia of not being “serious” about peace.
Zelensky said discussions about the front line were the “beginning of diplomacy”, which Russia was doing everything to avoid.
The only topic that could make Moscow “pay attention” was the supply of long-range weapons to Ukraine, he added.
Trump had discussed a summit in the Hungarian capital over the phone with Putin, a day before meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House.
Some reports suggested those talks had been a “shouting match”, with sources suggesting Trump had pushed Zelensky to give up large areas of territory in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, known collectively as the Donbas, as part of a deal with Russia.
However, Zelensky has always said Ukraine cannot relinquish the parts of the Donbas it still holds, on the grounds that Russia could later use the area as a springboard for further attacks.
Putin’s unscheduled call with Trump last Thursday came following speculation that the US was preparing to send long-range Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv that could potentially strike deep into Russia.
Zelensky said it was the Tomahawks issue that had forced Russia to engage in discussion.
Despite coming away from the White House empty-handed, he added that the talk about the missiles had turned out to be a “strong investment in diplomacy”.
