🔗 Share this article

There are "no arrangements" for US President Donald Trump to confer with Russian President Putin "in the near term", a White House official has announced.

Last Thursday Trump indicated he and the Kremlin leader would hold talks in Hungary's capital in the coming fortnight to address the war in Ukraine.

A planning session between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his opposite number Sergei Lavrov was scheduled to occur recently - but the administration said the two had had a "constructive" conversation and that a meeting was not "needed".

The administration declined to provide further information on why the talks had been postponed.

Earlier Events

Trump had raised the possibility of a Budapest summit during a call with Putin, a day before meeting Ukraine's President Zelensky in the White House.

Certain accounts claimed his meeting with Zelensky had been a "shouting match", with insiders indicating Trump had pressured him to cede significant territories of eastern Ukraine as part of a agreement with Moscow.

Nevertheless, on this week Trump endorsed a ceasefire proposal backed by Ukraine and European leaders to pause the war on the existing battle lines.

"Freeze the lines in its current state," he said.

Moscow has consistently objected against halting the present battle positions.

Moscow was only interested in "long-term, sustainable peace", Lavrov stated on this week, indicating that halting hostilities would simply constitute a short-term truce.

Diplomatic Positions

The "root causes" of the war demanded attention, Lavrov stated, using Kremlin shorthand for a range of maximalist demands that include the acknowledgment of total Russian authority over the eastern region as well as the disarmament of the country – a non-starter for Ukraine and its European partners.

The Ukrainian president said talks regarding the front line were the "beginning of diplomacy" but that Russia was "doing everything" to avoid diplomacy.

He also said the only topic that could cause Russia to "take notice" was that of the supply of extended-range arms to Ukraine.

Military Considerations

The Russian president's unplanned conversation with the US leader recently came ahead of speculation that the US was planning to provide distance-capable weapons to Ukraine that could potentially strike Russian territory.

The Ukrainian leader asserted it was the Tomahawks issue that had forced Russia to engage in discussion. The talk about the weapons systems had proven to be a "significant input" in diplomacy", he added.