Trump doesn’t want ‘wasted time’ with Putin as plan for Budapest meeting is called off

“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting,” Trump said. “I don’t want to have a waste of time — so we’ll see what happens.” His comments come after Russia's foreign secretary Sergey Lavrov made clear on Tuesday that Russia is opposed to an immediate ceasefire.

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday his plan for a swift meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin was on hold because he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time”, the latest twist in Trump’s stop-and-go effort to resolve the war in Ukraine.The decision to hold off on the meeting in Budapest, Hungary, which Trump had announced last week, was made following a call on Monday between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting,” Trump said. “I don’t want to have a waste of time, so we’ll see what happens.”Trump's comments came after Lavrov made clear that Russia is opposed to an immediate ceasefire, telling journalists in Moscow that it would go against what the two presidents agreed upon in Alaska.The US leader's hesitancy in meeting Putin will likely come as a relief to European leaders, who have accused Putin of stalling for time with diplomacy while trying to gain ground on the battlefield.The leaders — including the British prime minister, French president and German chancellor — said they opposed any push to make Ukraine surrender land captured by Russian forces in return for peace, as Trump most recently has suggested.They also plan to push forward with plans to use billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine’s war efforts, despite some misgivings about the legality and consequences of such a step.The US and Russian presidents last met in Alaska in August, but the encounter did not advance Trump’s stalled attempts to end a war that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.The Kremlin didn’t seem to be in a rush to get Trump and Putin together again either. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that “preparation is needed, serious preparation” before a meeting.Trump suggested that decisions about the meeting would be made in the coming days.Ukraine wants Tomahawk missiles from the USUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been trying to strengthen Ukraine’s position by seeking long-range Tomahawk missiles from the U.S., although Trump has waffled on whether he would provide them.“We need to end this war, and only pressure will lead to peace,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday in a Telegram post.He noted that Putin returned to diplomacy and called Trump last week when it looked like Tomahawk missiles were a possibility. But “as soon as the pressure eased a little, the Russians began to try to drop diplomacy, postpone the dialogue,” Zelenskyy said.On Wednesday, Trump is expected to hold talks in the White House with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. The military alliance has been coordinating deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, many of them purchased from the U.S. by Canada and European countries.A meeting of the Coalition of the Willing — a group of 35 countries that support Ukraine — is due to take place in London on Friday.How Trump’s stance on the war has shiftedMeanwhile, Trump has been shifting his stance all year on key issues in the war, including whether a ceasefire should come before longer-term peace talks, and whether Ukraine could win back land seized by Russia during almost four years of fighting.Trump initially focused on pressuring Ukraine to make concessions, but then grew frustrated with Putin’s intransigence. Trump often complains that he thought his good relationship with his Russian counterpart would have made it easier to end the war.Last month, Trump reversed his long-held position that Ukraine would have to give up land and suggested it could win back all the territory it has lost to Russia. But after a phone call with Putin last week and a subsequent meeting with Zelenskyy on Friday, Trump shifted his position again and called on Kyiv and Moscow to “stop where they are” and end the war.On Sunday, Trump said the industrial Donbas region of eastern Ukraine should be “cut up,” leaving most of it in Russian hands.Trump said Monday that while he thinks it is possible that Ukraine can ultimately defeat Russia, he’s now doubtful it will happen.Russia occupies about one fifth of Ukraine, but carving up their country in return for peace is unacceptable to Kyiv officials.Also, a conflict frozen on the current front line could fester, with occupied areas of Ukraine offering Moscow a springboard for new attacks in the future, Ukrainian and European officials fear.