 "Trump says he did not want a 'wasted meeting' with Putin after in-person talks fell through")
Trump says he did not want a ‘wasted meeting’ with Putin after in-person talks fell through
US President Donald Trump has said that he did not want a “wasted meeting” with Russian President Vladimir Putin after the possibility of an in-person meeting between the two was shelved.
“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked why the Putin encounter had been put on ice. “I don’t want to have a waste of time, so I’ll see what happens.”
Trump indicated that a key sticking point between him and Putin remains Russia’s refusal to stop fighting along the current front line. The White House on Tuesday announced that there are currently “no plans” for a meeting between the two leaders.
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.”
No meeting between Trump and Putin
Weeks after a phone call between the two leaders, Trump announced that he would be meeting Putin in Budapest later this month. However, the Kremlin said on Tuesday that hopes for such talks were bleak, following which White House said that the meeting was cancelled.
“We cannot postpone something that has not been finalised,” Reuters quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying in response to a CNN report that a key preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had been put on hold.
“Neither President Trump nor President Putin has given exact dates,” he added.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also called off an expected meeting to arrange the Budapest summit after speaking by phone on Monday, the White House said.
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