The Trump-Putin Summit set to take place in Budapest is now on hold after Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a call with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on Tuesday.
Last week, President Donald Trump had announced that he would meet Vladimir Putin for another in-person meeting in a bid to resolve the years-long Russia-Ukraine conflict. (RELATED: Trump To Meet Putin In Hungary – Aims To End ‘Inglorious’ Ukraine War)
However, after a call between Rubio and Lavrov, the meeting has been put on hold indefinitley.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the press on Tuesday that more “preparation is needed, serious preparation.”
Trump and Putin previously met face-to-face back in August at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, however the meeting failed to produce a peace deal.
The U.S. president came up empty in the meeting, with Trump later admitting “we didn’t get there” in reference to a potential peace deal.
Trump said:
I’m going to start making a few phone calls and tell them what happened. But we had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to. And there are just a very few that are left. Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.
Last week, Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House after having a phone call with Putin. (RELATED: Trump To Host White House Meeting With Zelenskyy Following Putin Call)
Zelensky posted on X that he was “grateful to President Trump for our dialogue and his support,” and that his visit to Washington would focus on “air defense and our long-range capabilities aimed at exerting pressure on Russia for the sake of peace.”
Priot to the meeting, Zelenskyy made clear his chief aim is to secure better defenses for Ukraine amid Russia’s constant aerial bombardments of civilian targets like cities, energy infrastructure and hospitals, and his big-ticket item is the American Tomahawk missile.
