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President Donald Trump abruptly canceled a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, citing concerns about a "wasted" encounter as diplomatic efforts to end the Ukraine war appear increasingly deadlocked.
The reversal marks a sharp turn from Trump's announcement just days earlier that he would meet Putin in Budapest within two weeks, a summit the president had framed as the culmination of what he described as productive negotiations.
"I don't want to have a wasted meeting," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "I don't want to have a waste of time, so I'll see what happens."
The cancellation came after tense negotiations last Friday between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which the American leader pushed Ukraine to surrender the eastern Donbas region in exchange for peace, according to a senior Ukrainian official who spoke to AFP.
"A lot of things are happening on the war front," Trump said when pressed by journalists about what prompted the change. "And we'll be notifying you over the next two days as to what we're doing."
A White House official confirmed there were "no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future." Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also scrapped an expected meeting that was intended to arrange the Budapest summit, following a phone conversation Monday.
The senior Ukrainian official characterized last week's White House talks as "not easy," saying diplomatic efforts felt like they were being "dragged out" and "going in circles."
When asked whether Trump urged Zelensky to withdraw from Ukrainian-controlled territory — a central Russian demand — the official confirmed: "Yes, that's true."
Zelensky left Washington without the long-range Tomahawk missiles he had requested. Trump had spoken with Putin the day before the Ukrainian leader's visit.
Ukraine has consistently maintained that the Donbas — an industrial region encompassing the eastern Lugansk and Donetsk areas — is integral to its territory and has repeatedly rejected ceding it to Russia.
The collapse of summit plans reflects mounting frustration within the Trump administration as the president's bet on personal rapport with Putin has repeatedly failed to yield a breakthrough. The two leaders last met in Alaska in August but made no progress on ending the conflict.
The Kremlin said Tuesday there was no "precise" date for any new meeting between the two leaders.
European leaders have rejected the idea of Ukraine surrendering territory, instead backing a proposal to freeze fighting along current front lines. In a joint statement published Tuesday, leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned that Russia was not "serious about peace."
"We strongly support President Trump's position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations," the statement said.
Trump publicly called last week for both Moscow and Kyiv to halt the war at their current battle lines, making no public references to Ukraine giving up territory.
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NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was heading to Washington on Tuesday for a meeting with Trump, the military alliance said in a statement.
EU leaders are set to close ranks in support of Ukraine at a Brussels summit Thursday, followed by a "coalition of the willing" meeting of European leaders in London Friday to discuss next steps for helping Kyiv.
Russia has occupied approximately one-fifth of Ukrainian territory since Putin ordered a full-scale invasion in February 2022, describing it as a "special military operation" to demilitarize the country and prevent NATO expansion. Much of the occupied land has been devastated by fighting, while tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers have been killed.
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