Trump-Putin Budapest summit put on hold, US officials say no meeting in ‘immediate future’

The summit in Budapest, Hungary, where US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were set to meet to discuss the latter's ongoing conflict with Ukraine, has been called off after a phone conversation between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, as per a report by the Associated Press.

A US official told the news agency that there will be no meeting between the two leaders in the ‘immediate future’.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson from Kremlin, said that there should not be any urgency for a meeting betweeen the two leaders as “preparation is needed, serious preparation.”

The US President, in September, reversed his position that Ukraine would have to concede territory to Russia and suggested that Kyiv 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 Zelensky on Friday, Trump once again shifted his position and called on both countries to “stop where they are” in the more than three-year war.

Where Europe stands

Meanwhile, Zelensky and other European leaders have accused Putin of stalling talks in order to carry on his ‘invasion’. They are also opposed to Trump's idea of Ukraine surrendering parts of its territory to Russia for a ceasefire to take effect.

They said that they “remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force.”

Eight leaders from across Europe, along with senior officials of the European Union, released a joint statement saying that they are willing to go ahead with plans of using frozen Russian assets in their region to help Kyiv fight the war. However, questions of legality hovers around such a step.

They are also trying to keep Trump on their side, saying, “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,” adding, “We can all see that Putin continues to choose violence and destruction."

The EU is holding a summit in Brussels on Thursday, where they will discuss more sanctions on Russia.

Tomahawks could have been peacemakers?

Zelensky is of the opinion that Putin had agreed to return to the negotiating tables, and had called Trump last week as the possibility of the US supplying Russia with Tomahawk missiles arose.

However, "as soon as the pressure eased a little, the Russians began to try to drop diplomacy, postpone the dialogue,” the Ukrainian president said in a post on Telegram.