Washington: President Donald Trump said Tuesday his plan for a swift meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin was on hold because he did not want it to be a “waste of time.” It was 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.”
Lavrov made clear in public comments Tuesday that Russia is opposed to an immediate ceasefire. Trump, meanwhile, 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’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 did not 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.
What Ukraine wants from the US
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been trying to strengthen Ukraine’s position by seeking long-range Tomahawk missiles from the US, 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 US by Canada and European countries.
A meeting of the Coalition of the Willing — a group of 35 countries who support Ukraine — is due to take place in London on Friday.
How Trump’s stance on the war has shifted
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 is now doubtful it will happen.
Ukrainian and European leaders trying to keep Trump on their side
“We strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” the leaders’ statement said. “We can all see that Putin continues to choose violence and destruction.”
Lavrov made clear on Tuesday that Russia opposes a ceasefire, Russian state news agencies reported. He told journalists in Moscow that it would go against what the two presidents agreed upon in Alaska. Trump had hoped to get Russia to stop the fighting, but he was rebuffed by Putin, who has pushed for a comprehensive settlement to end the war.
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.
The statement by the leaders of Ukraine, the UK, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Denmark and EU officials came early in what Zelenskyy said on Monday would be a week that is “very active in diplomacy.”
More international economic sanctions on Russia are likely to be discussed at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.
“We must ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defence industry, until Putin is ready to make peace,” Tuesday’s statement said.
AP
