Why Trump has cancelled his talks with Putin in Budapest

A lot can happen within six days. Ask Donald Trump. After raising hopes of possible peace for Ukraine last week when he announced that he would soon be meeting his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Hungary’s Budapest, the US president, on Tuesday (October 21), announced that work on a second summit has halted.

Speaking to reporters, Trump said that he did not want a “wasted meeting” with Putin, adding: “I don’t want to have a waste of time, so I’ll see what happens.”

But what led to this sudden turnaround by Trump? And more importantly what does this mean for the Russia-Ukraine war that is now in its fourth year?

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Plans for second Trump-Putin summit halted

On Tuesday, the White House made a sudden announcement that President Trump no longer planned to meet with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in “the immediate future.”

This is a sudden reversal of what happened just days ago when the US president held a “ productive phone call” with his Russian counterpart during which they decided to hold a second face-to-face, this time in Budapest.

At the time, Trump noted that “great progress was made” and the call ended with Trump and Putin agreeing to meet and “see if we can bring this inglorious war, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end”.

However, on Tuesday, the White House reversed their stance, saying there were now “no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future” despite the Budapest announcement.

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Asked by an AFP journalist what had changed his mind, Trump said: “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.”

Moscow’s stance unchanged

But what led to this change in posture from Trump? It boils down to the fact that Moscow’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine war remains unchanged.

It appears that the US and Russia held a phone call on Monday — between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, during which Lavrov said his country’s negotiating position remained unchanged.

Confirming the call and divulging what the two spoke, Lavrov said in a press conference on Tuesday that Russia’s position on the war had not changed: that a peace deal must come before a ceasefire.

“It is now being said from Washington that there is a need to stop immediately, that there is no need to discuss anything further, and that ‘history should judge’,” Lavrov said. “If we just stop, it means forgetting the root causes of this conflict, which the American administration clearly understood and voiced this understanding upon Trump’s assumption of power.”

Russia has long called for the elimination of the “root causes” of the war in Ukraine, claiming that its growing alignment with Europe and desire to join Nato amount to an existential threat. Putin has questioned the legitimacy of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and urged new elections in Ukraine, called for the end of the so-called persecution of Russian speakers and demanded that Ukraine doesn’t join Nato.

“We remain entirely committed to this formula and I confirmed it yesterday in the conversation with Marco Rubio,” Lavrov said.

Lavrov also questioned how Putin would fly to Budapest, given Poland’s threat to execute the International Criminal Court’s active arrest warrant if Putin flies inside its airspace.

According to news agency Reuters, Russia also reaffirmed its terms for reaching a peace deal with Ukraine in a private communique sent to the US. In it, Russia demanded that it take control of all of Ukraine’s Donbas region. It also reiterated its previous stance that no Nato troops be deployed to Ukraine as part of any peace agreement.

Notably, on Monday, Trump supported a ceasefire plan put forth by Ukraine and its European allies to freeze the conflict where it is. “Let it be cut the way it is,” Trump said. “I said: cut and stop at the battle line. Go home. Stop fighting, stop killing people.”

In fact, Zelenskyy and the leaders of the UK, France, Germany and five other European countries endorsed Trump’s call for a ceasefire along the current frontlines. They emphasised “the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations” in a joint statement.

However, Russia is unwilling to accede on this point. Earlier, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said that the idea had been floated to them, but they are consistent in their position — Moscow’s insistence on the complete withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the embattled eastern regions.

Zelenskyy accuses Russia of being unserious

Following the announcement, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy accused Russia of “not being serious about peace”. He further claimed that Russia “became less interested in diplomacy” after the United States declined to provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles, at least for now.

“As soon as the issue of long-range capabilities became a little further away for us — for Ukraine — Russia almost automatically became less interested in diplomacy,” Zelenskyy said in his daily address. “This is a signal that this very issue — the issue of long-range capabilities — may be the indispensable key to peace.”

“The greater Ukraine’s long-range capabilities,” Zelenskyy added, “the greater Russia’s willingness to end the war.”

Ukraine has long been demanding for America’s long-range Tomahawk missiles, on which Trump has remained non-committal. The Ukrainian leader even pushed for them during his Friday meeting with his American counterpart at the White House, but reports reveal that it descended into a shouting match with Trump demanding that Ukraine make territorial concessions, a move Kyiv has refused.

Russia-Ukraine war wages on

Meanwhile, the fighting between Russia and Ukraine continues at the frontlines. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian military said that it hit a Russian chemical plant with UK-made Storm Shadow missiles.

“The Bryansk Chemical Plant is a key facility of the aggressor state’s military-industrial complex,” the Ukrainian military said in an X post on Tuesday. It added that the plant “produces gunpowder, explosives and rocket fuel components used in ammunition and missiles employed by the enemy to shell the territory of Ukraine”.

In turn, Russia launched missiles strikes in the Ukrainian capital, igniting cars and shattering windows. Emergency services were dispatched to several sites where the debris from the destroyed air weapons fell, but no casualties have been reported, said Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

With inputs from agencies