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There are “no plans” for US President Donald Trump to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin “in the immediate future”, a White House official has stated.<\/p>\n
Last Thursday Trump said he and the Russian president would hold talks in Budapest within two weeks to discuss the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
A preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart 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”.<\/p>\n
The White House did not share any more details on why the talks had been put on hold.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Trump had discussed a Budapest summit over the phone with Putin, a day before meeting Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House.<\/p>\n
Some reports suggested his talks with Zelensky had been a “shouting match”, with sources suggesting Trump had pushed him to give up large areas of territory in eastern Ukraine as part of a deal with Russia.<\/p>\n
However, on Monday Trump embraced a ceasefire proposal backed by Kyiv and European leaders to freeze the conflict on the current front line.<\/p>\n
“Let it be cut the way it is,” he said. <\/p>\n
Russia has repeatedly pushed back against freezing the current line of contact.<\/p>\n
Moscow was only interested in “long-term, sustainable peace”, Lavrov said on Tuesday, implying that freezing the front line would only amount to a temporary ceasefire.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 a non-starter for Kyiv and its European partners.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said discussions about the front line were the “beginning of diplomacy” but that Russia was “doing everything to avoid diplomacy”.<\/p>\n
He also said the only topic that could make Moscow “pay attention” was that of the supply of long-range weapons to Ukraine. <\/p>\n
Putin’s unscheduled call with Trump last Thursday came ahead of speculation that the US was preparing to send long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine that could potentially strike deep into Russia.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said it was the Tomahawks issue that had forced Russia to engage in discussion. The talk about the missiles had turned out to be a “strong investment in diplomacy”, he added. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n