Trump Says He Doesn’t Want ‘Wasted’ Meeting With Putin

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he had postponed plans for a summit in Budapest with Russia’s Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine war, explaining that he did not want a “wasted” meeting.

The reversal came just days after Trump announced he would meet Putin in the Hungarian capital within two weeks, following what he described as a productive phone call aimed at ending the conflict.

According to a senior Ukrainian official, Trump had pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to surrender the eastern Donbas region in exchange for peace during “tense” talks in Washington last Friday.

However, on Tuesday, a White House official clarified that there were “no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future,” despite the earlier announcement.

“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked why the encounter had been put on hold. “I don’t want to have a waste of time, so I’ll see what happens.”

When pressed by an AFP reporter about what had changed his mind, Trump replied, “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 added that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had also canceled their planned discussion to prepare for the Budapest summit after speaking by phone on Monday.

‘Going in Circles’

Trump has long relied on personal rapport with Putin to broker a peace deal on Ukraine but has repeatedly faced frustration with the Russian leader.

Meanwhile, Ukraine and its European allies have been left struggling to keep up with the unpredictable US president.

Zelensky’s talks with Trump were “not easy,” said the Ukrainian official, describing diplomatic efforts to end the war as “dragged out” and “going in circles.”

Trump last week called for Moscow and Kyiv to halt the fighting along their current battle lines but made no public mention of territorial concessions.

When asked whether Trump had urged Zelensky to withdraw from areas still under Ukrainian control — one of Putin’s core demands — the official confirmed, “Yes, that’s true.”

Zelensky left the meeting empty-handed after Trump, who had spoken with Putin the previous day, denied his request for long-range Tomahawk missiles and instead pressed him to strike a deal.

Ukraine insists that the Donbas — an industrial region encompassing the eastern Lugansk and Donetsk areas — remains an integral part of its sovereign territory and has repeatedly refused to cede it.

‘Line of Contact’

The Kremlin said Tuesday there was no “precise” date for a new Trump-Putin meeting, following their August talks in Alaska that ended without a breakthrough.

European leaders have dismissed any suggestion of Ukraine giving up land, instead supporting the idea of freezing hostilities along current front lines.

In a joint statement Tuesday, leaders including France’s Emmanuel Macron, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and Britain’s Keir Starmer said Russia was not “serious about peace.”

“We strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting should stop immediately and that the current line of contact should serve as the starting point for negotiations,” the statement said.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was en route to Washington on Tuesday for talks with Trump, according to the alliance.

EU leaders are expected to reaffirm their backing for Ukraine at a Brussels summit on Thursday, followed by a “coalition of the willing” meeting in London on Friday to coordinate further support for Kyiv.

Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, calling it a “special military operation” aimed at demilitarizing the country and blocking NATO’s expansion.

Russia now occupies about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory — much of it devastated by fighting — while tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed.