Preparations for Trump-Putin Summit Delayed Days After Budapest Negotiations Proposed
Currently exist "no plans" for US President President Trump to meet Russia's Putin "anytime soon", a administration representative has declared.
This past week the US president said he and the Russian president would hold talks in Hungary's capital soon to address the ongoing hostilities.
A preparatory meeting between America's top diplomat Secretary Rubio and his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Lavrov was due to be held recently - but the administration said the two had had a "positive" discussion and that a meeting was not "necessary".
The White House withheld further information on the reason the negotiations had been delayed.
Previous Developments
Trump had raised the possibility of a Hungarian meeting during a call with Putin, a day before hosting Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House.
Various sources suggested his talks with the Ukrainian leader had been a "heated exchange", with those familiar suggesting Trump had pushed him to give up significant territories of eastern Ukraine as part of a agreement with Moscow.
Yet, on this week Trump supported a ceasefire proposal endorsed by Kyiv and EU officials to halt the conflict on the current front line.
"Freeze the lines the way it is," he stated.
Moscow has repeatedly pushed back against pausing the existing front lines.
Moscow was solely focused on "enduring stability", Russia's foreign minister said on this week, indicating that pausing conflict would simply constitute a brief pause.
Diplomatic Positions
The "root causes" of the war demanded attention, Lavrov said, using Russian diplomatic language for a series of maximalist demands that encompass the acceptance of total Russian authority over the Donbas as well as the demilitarisation of the country – a unacceptable proposition for Ukraine and its European partners.
The Ukrainian president commented talks regarding the front line were the "commencement of dialogue" but that Russia was "employing all tactics" to evade negotiations.
He further commented the only topic that could make Moscow "pay attention" was that of the supply of long-range weapons to the Ukrainian military.
Strategic Factors
The Russian president's unplanned conversation with Trump last Thursday occurred before reports that the US was considering delivering extended-range cruise missiles to Ukraine that could possibly hit Russian territory.
Zelensky said it was the missile discussion that had forced Russia to enter into dialogue. The talk about the weapons systems had proven to be a "valuable contribution" in international relations", he remarked.