President Donald Trump’s planned second meeting with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin appears canceled after a phone call between top U.S. and Russian officials.
The White House said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a “productive call” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, adding that “there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future,” the New York Post reported on Tuesday.
“Secretary Rubio and Foreign Minister Lavrov had a productive call,” a White House official told the Post. “Therefore, an additional-in-person meeting between the Secretary and Foreign Minister is not necessary, and there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future.”
President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “I don’t want to have a wasted meeting. I don’t want to have a waste of time.” Trump, however, left the door open for a second meeting with Putin.
“We’ll see what happens. We haven’t made a determination,” he added.
Trump held a “lengthy” phone conversation with Putin last week one day before he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. After the call, Trump announced that he and Putin agreed to meet in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss bringing an end to the war in Ukraine.
Trump had previously met with Putin in Alaska on August 15 to negotiate a deal between Russia and Ukraine. Following the Alaska summit, Putin has continued his attacks on Ukraine.
Trump has considered sending American-made Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which would allow Kyiv to fire at targets deep inside of Russia. During his meeting with Zelensky on Friday, however, Trump suggested that he wasn’t ready to provide Ukraine with the long-range cruise missiles. In an X post on Tuesday, Zelensky argued that “as soon as the issue of long-range capabilities for Ukraine became less immediate, [Russia’s] interest in diplomacy faded.”
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“The greater Ukraine’s long-range reach, the greater Russia’s willingness to end the war. These weeks reaffirmed it,” Zelensky added. “Discussion on Tomahawks turned out to be a major investment in diplomacy – we forced Russia to reveal that Tomahawks are the card they take seriously. We will continue engaging with Europeans and Americans on long-range capabilities.”
With the second round of Trump-Putin talks now appearing unlikely, there remain no signs that Moscow is interested in ending the war. Russia has continued its attacks on Ukraine, killing four people with strikes on Tuesday targeting Ukraine’s Chernihiv region that also left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without power.
Trump is scheduled to meet with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. Trump’s reported meeting with Rutte will come as European leaders are expected to discuss more economic sanctions on Russia during a meeting in Brussels. A statement put out by leaders from Ukraine, the U.K., Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Denmark, and the E.U. called for world leaders to “ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defense industry, until Putin is ready to make peace.”
