🔗 Share this article Plans for Putin-Trump Summit Postponed Days After Budapest Talks Announced Putin and Trump last met in late summer in Alaska and the US president had stated additional talks would take place in Budapest There are "no plans" for American leader Donald Trump to confer with Russian President Vladimir Putin "in the immediate future", a administration representative has stated. This past week Trump said he and the Kremlin leader would conduct negotiations in Hungary's capital in the coming fortnight to examine the Ukraine conflict. A preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Secretary Rubio and his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Lavrov was scheduled to occur recently - but the administration stated the two had had a "constructive" call and that a face-to-face session was not "necessary". The White House withheld further information on the reason the negotiations had been put on hold. Earlier Events Trump had raised the possibility of a Budapest summit over the phone with Putin, a just prior to hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House. Certain accounts indicated his meeting with Zelensky had been a "heated exchange", with insiders suggesting Trump had pushed him to give up extensive regions of Ukraine's east as part of a settlement with Russia. However, on Monday Trump embraced a peace initiative backed by Ukraine and European leaders to freeze the hostilities on the current front line. "Freeze the lines the way it is," he remarked. Russia has consistently objected against freezing the existing front lines. The Russian government was only interested in "enduring stability", Lavrov commented on this week, indicating that halting hostilities would merely represent a short-term truce. Negotiating Stances The "root causes" of the hostilities demanded attention, the Russian diplomat said, using Moscow's terminology for a range of maximalist demands that encompass the acknowledgment of full Russian sovereignty over the eastern region as well as the military reduction of the country – a non-starter for Ukraine and its Western allies. Zelensky said conversations concerning the current lines were the "beginning of diplomacy" but that Russia was "employing all tactics" to avoid diplomacy. He further commented the sole subject that could make Moscow "take notice" was that of the delivery of distance-capable munitions to Ukraine. Weapons Discussions The Russian president's unplanned conversation with the US leader recently occurred before speculation that the US was planning to provide long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine that could theoretically target inside Russia. Zelensky asserted it was the missile discussion that had compelled Moscow to enter into dialogue. The talk about the weapons systems had proven to be a "significant input" in diplomacy", he remarked.