United States President Donald Trump has cancelled his planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest.
Trump believes that the upcoming meeting with Putin would not yield the desired results at this stage of negotiations, while Moscow has yet to comment on the latest development.
He made the announcement after meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House on Wednesday, highlighting the significance of seriousness in talks to resolve the Ukraine conflict.
“It did not feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get, so I cancelled it,” he said. The 79-year-old President, though, did not rule out holding talks with Moscow at a different venue and on a later date.
“We will do it (the summit) in the future,” he added. His remarks follow the US Treasury's new sanction measures to be imposed on Russia over its “lack of serious commitment to the peace process”.
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The restrictions targeted two of Russia’s largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, as well as their subsidiaries. Trump expressed his reservations that new measures would cause any serious worry in the Russian economy, and that sanctions might have any significant impact on Russia overall.
“Hopefully, Putin will become reasonable, and hopefully Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be reasonable too,” he said. “It takes two to tango.” Plans for a Summit between the two leaders were first announced last week after the two leaders had spoken on the phone.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s official spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, earlier said the Russia–US meeting should be preceded by “serious preparations”, highlighting that a summit between the two leaders “should not be wasted”, as both presidents “are accustomed to working for a result”.
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