US President Donald Trump has announced that he is cancelling his planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest. He said that he believes "it wasn't the right time" and that the meeting would "it's no good now". He added, however, that it could happen "in the future". This was reported by Reuters.
According to Russia's TASS news agency, this is not the first time a US president has cancelled a meeting with Putin. The agency counted that at least three meetings have been cancelled in recent years, including two during Trump's first term. In 2018, one of them was supposed to take place in Paris on November 11, but France asked for a postponement at the time so that the meeting would not distract from the centenary celebrations of the end of the First World War. Shortly afterwards, a planned meeting at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires was also cancelled because Russia refused to release Ukrainian sailors detained in the Kerch Strait.
TASS recalls that despite these cancellations, the two statesmen spoke briefly informally on the sidelines of the G20 summit and met a year later in Osaka. After Trump returned to the White House this August 2025, the first official summit was held in Alaska.
According to Reuters, the current cancellation of the meeting is directly linked to the Ukraine issue. Trump has suggested in recent weeks "freezing the conflict" along the current battle lines, which the Kremlin has accepted with cautious interest, but negotiations between advisers on both sides have reportedly not progressed enough for the summit to have any real benefit. As a result, Washington has decided, according to agency sources, that "in the immediate future" there is no further meeting scheduled.
At the same time as announcing the cancellation of the talks, the US government expanded sanctions against Russian energy companies in a bid to increase pressure on Moscow over the ongoing fighting in Ukraine. According to Reuters, Trump said that "doesn't want to have a useless meeting that won't change anything".
The Kremlin was reticent about the decision. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the specific date of the next meeting "not specified" and that the preparations "care must be taken to ensure that the meeting takes place at the appropriate time". According to the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister. Sergei Ryabkov Moscow continues to regard dialogue with Washington as important, but "without a concrete plan for the meeting, there can be no progress".
Observers say the cancellation of the meeting shows that even in a period of diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine, tactical and political considerations can easily prevail over the will to act. Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly stressed that he is "ready to talk to Putin when the time is right" - But the question remains when and under what conditions that time will actually come.
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