Plans for Trump-Putin Summit Shelved Shortly Following Hungarian Capital Talks Announced
There are "no preparations" for American leader Donald Trump to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin "in the immediate future", a White House official has stated.
Recently Trump stated he and the Russian president would hold talks in Hungary's capital within two weeks to discuss the ongoing hostilities.
A preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov was planned for recently - but the administration clarified the two had had a "positive" discussion and that a face-to-face session was no longer "necessary".
The administration did not share any more details on the reason the negotiations had been postponed.
Background Context
Trump had raised the possibility of a Hungarian meeting during a call with Putin, a just prior to meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.
Certain accounts indicated his meeting with Zelensky had been a "shouting match", with insiders indicating the president had pressured him to relinquish significant territories of eastern Ukraine as part of a settlement with Russia.
Nevertheless, on Monday Trump supported a peace initiative backed by Ukraine and EU officials to freeze the conflict on the current front line.
"Leave it as is in its current state," he remarked.
Moscow has consistently objected against pausing the current line of contact.
The Russian government was solely focused on "enduring stability", Russia's foreign minister said on Tuesday, implying that pausing conflict would merely represent a brief pause.
Diplomatic Positions
The "underlying reasons" of the hostilities needed to be addressed, Lavrov stated, using Russian diplomatic language for a set of maximalist demands that involve the acknowledgment of full Russian sovereignty over the eastern region as well as the disarmament of the country – a impossible condition for Kyiv and its Western allies.
Zelensky said discussions about the current lines were the "commencement of dialogue" but that Moscow was "doing everything" to prevent dialogue.
He additionally stated the only topic that could cause Russia to "become engaged" was that of the supply of extended-range arms to the Ukrainian military.
Military Considerations
Putin's unscheduled call with Trump last Thursday occurred before speculation that the US was considering delivering distance-capable weapons to Ukrainian forces that could potentially strike inside Russia.
Zelensky asserted it was the weapons consideration that had compelled Moscow to participate in talks. The discussion regarding the weapons systems had turned out to be a "valuable contribution" in negotiations", he added.