Trump Shelves Planned Putin Summit, Citing ‘Wasted’ Meeting

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) — US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he had scrapped plans for a highly anticipated summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, citing concerns that the meeting would be “wasted” amid ongoing uncertainty over the Ukraine war.

Trump’s decision came just days after he announced the summit would take place within two weeks, following what he described as a “productive” phone call with Putin on efforts to end the war.

But on Tuesday, a White House official said there were now “no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future.”

“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I don’t want to waste time, so I’ll see what happens.”

Asked what had changed his mind, the president said, “A lot of things are happening on the war front. And we’ll be notifying you over the next two days as to what we’re doing.”

The White House also confirmed that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had called off a planned preparatory meeting for the Budapest summit after speaking by phone on Monday.

Tense Talks with Zelensky

The cancellation follows tense discussions between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington last Friday.

According to a senior Ukrainian official quoted by AFP, Trump pressured Zelensky to give up the eastern Donbas region in exchange for peace — a proposal that Kyiv has long rejected.

“Diplomatic efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war feel like they’re being dragged out and going in circles,” the official said, describing the White House talks as “not easy.”

Zelensky reportedly left the meeting empty-handed after Trump, who had spoken with Putin the day before, turned down Ukraine’s request for long-range Tomahawk missiles and pressed for a ceasefire along current front lines.

Publicly, Trump has called on both Moscow and Kyiv to halt fighting at existing battle lines, but the Ukrainian official confirmed that the US leader privately urged Kyiv to withdraw from territory it still controls — a key demand of the Kremlin.

Ukraine considers the Donbas, which includes the industrial regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, an inseparable part of its sovereign territory and has repeatedly refused to negotiate away land.

Allies Urge Caution

The Kremlin said Tuesday there was no “precise” date for any future Trump-Putin meeting, though the two last met in Alaska in August without reaching a breakthrough on Ukraine.

European leaders, meanwhile, have rejected the idea of Ukraine giving up territory. In a joint statement, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Moscow was “not serious about peace,” but voiced support for an immediate ceasefire.

“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.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte traveled to Washington on Tuesday for talks with Trump, while EU leaders are set to meet in Brussels on Thursday to reaffirm support for Ukraine.

A separate meeting of European allies — dubbed the “coalition of the willing” — will take place in London on Friday to discuss next steps.

Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, describing it as a “special military operation” aimed at demilitarizing the country and preventing NATO expansion.

Russia now occupies roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, much of it devastated by fighting that has killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians on both sides.