Trump’s Putin Summit Was Scrapped In Another Reversal
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t be meeting in Budapest after all. The White House said that the summit, which Trump announced just last Thursday, was now off following a conversation between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “Secretary Rubio and Foreign Minister Lavrov had a productive
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t be meeting in Budapest after all.
The White House said that the summit, which Trump announced just last Thursday, was now off following a conversation between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“Secretary Rubio and Foreign Minister Lavrov had a productive call. Therefore, an additional-in-person meeting between the Secretary and Foreign Minister is not necessary, and there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future,” a White House official, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said in an email to HuffPost and other outlets.
The decision to scrap the summit comes after the Kremlin has refused to back down on its demands for territory in Ukraine while Trump has floated freezing the war along its current frontlines and implementing a ceasefire.
“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting,” Trump said during a White House event on Tuesday. “I don’t want to have a waste of time — so we’ll see what happens.”
The change of plans also follows the administration’s refusal to respond to questions from HuffPost senior White House correspondent S.V. Dáte about who selected Budapest as the location for the confab. When asked about the decision, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said childishly, “Your mom did,” while failing to provide an answer to the inquiry.
The meeting’s cancellation marks an abrupt reversal for the White House and a continuation of the fits and starts that have become synonymous with the administration’s talks with Russia.
Trump announced the summit with Putin after holding a call with the Russian leader last Thursday and said it would occur “within two weeks or so.”
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The summit would have occurred roughly three months after Trump’s last meeting with Putin, during which he failed to extract a ceasefire. The decision to cancel the gathering underscores ongoing questions about the state of negotiations over ending the war and the intractable nature of Russia’s demands.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy argued on Tuesday that Russia’s interest in diplomacy had waned after the U.S. signaled it would not give Ukraine long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, which would have significantly bolstered the country’s military capabilities.
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