Plans for a second high-stakes summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin appear to be on hold following a phone call between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
A White House official confirmed to the New York Post on Tuesday that “there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future,” attributing the pause to what was described as a “productive call” between Rubio and Lavrov. “An additional in-person meeting between the Secretary and Foreign Minister is not necessary,” the official added.
President Trump addressed the press from the Oval Office, signaling that the door for a future summit remained open but stressing that any meeting must be worth the effort. “I don’t want to have a wasted meeting. I don’t want to have a waste of time,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens. We haven’t made a determination.”
The now-stalled Budapest summit would have followed a “lengthy” phone conversation between Trump and Putin last week, which came just one day before Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. The former president has been pushing for an end to the Ukraine war, but so far, Moscow has shown little interest in backing down.
At their Alaska summit in August, Trump and Putin reportedly discussed the framework of a ceasefire deal. However, Russian aggression has only intensified in the weeks since, with new missile strikes hitting Ukraine’s Chernihiv region on Tuesday, killing four civilians and knocking out power to large parts of northern Ukraine.
Trump has floated the idea of arming Ukraine with American-made Tomahawk cruise missiles, a move that could significantly shift the balance of power on the battlefield. But during his Friday meeting with Zelensky, he signaled hesitation about moving forward with the missile transfers.
Zelensky, in a post on X, interpreted the pause as a missed opportunity. “The greater Ukraine’s long-range reach, the greater Russia’s willingness to end the war,” he said, arguing that just the prospect of the U.S. providing Tomahawks had been enough to rattle the Kremlin.
Meanwhile, European leaders continue to tighten the economic screws on Moscow. In a joint statement Tuesday, leaders from the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Finland, Poland, Norway, Denmark, and the European Union called on the international community to “ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defense industry, until Putin is ready to make peace.”
Trump is expected to meet with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday in Washington. That meeting will likely shape the next phase of the administration’s diplomatic strategy, especially as pressure mounts for a path forward in the stalled Ukraine conflict.
The post Second Trump-Putin Summit in Doubt After Rubio-Lavrov Call appeared first on Real News Now.
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