The summit in Budapest, Hungary, where US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were to meet to discuss the latter’s ongoing conflict with Ukraine, was called off after a telephone conversation between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, according to a report by the Associated Press. A US official told the news agency there would be no meeting between the two leaders in the “immediate future”. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, said there should not be any urgency for a meeting between the two leaders, as “preparation is needed, serious preparation.” In September, the US president reversed his position that Ukraine would have to cede territory to Russia and suggested that Kiev could win back all the territory it had lost to Russia. However, after a phone call with Putin last week and a subsequent meeting with Zelensky on Friday, Trump again shifted his position, calling on both countries to “stop where they are” in the more than three-year war.
Trump-Putin Budapest summit on hold, US officials say no meeting in ‘immediate future’
