Plans for Trump-Putin summit paused after fresh roadblock in Ukraine talks
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US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018. — Reuters
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US President Donald Trump laid out plans to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Budapest on Tuesday, as efforts to end the war in Ukraine hit another roadblock.
“President Trump has no plans to meet with President Putin in the near future” but opted against an in-person meeting, a senior White House official told Reuters, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had a “productive call.”
Trump announced last week that he and Putin would meet soon in Hungary to try to end the war in Ukraine. But Putin is unwilling to consider concessions. Moscow has long demanded that Ukraine agree to cede more territory before any ceasefire.
Asked by reporters about the possibility of a summit, Trump said he didn’t want to have a “lost meeting” but suggested there could be further developments and that “we’ll let you know in the next couple of days” about them.
Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, said in a social media post that “preparations are underway” for a summit.
Russia reiterated its longstanding conditions for a peace deal in a private communication it sent to the United States late last week, according to two U.S. officials and two people familiar with the situation.
The communique reaffirmed a demand for full control of the long-contested eastern Donbass region, effectively rejecting Trump’s call for a ceasefire to freeze the front lines in their favored locations, according to an official.
Russia controls all of Luhansk Oblast and about 75% of neighboring Donetsk, which together make up the Donbas region.
European leaders called on Washington on Tuesday to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, with the current battle lines to serve as the basis for any future talks.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was scheduled to travel to Washington on Tuesday for talks with Trump, two sources familiar with the matter said, on Wednesday.
A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Roti intended to trump European views on the ceasefire and subsequent peace talks.
Trump, who last week called Putin and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, had hoped for another high-profile session with the Russian leader after the August summit in Alaska.
But both sides postponed an initial meeting between Rubio and Lavrov that was expected to take place in Budapest on Thursday.
Lavrov and Rubio spoke by phone on Monday. Lavrov said the location and timing of the next Trump-Putin summit was less important than the substance of implementing the understanding reached in Alaska.
The Kremlin said there was no clear date and that a summit would require “serious preparations”, which could take time.
“Listen, we understand the presidents, but we cannot postpone what has not been finalized,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “Neither President Trump nor President Putin gave exact dates.”
Asked if Moscow had an understanding of a possible date for the summit, Peskov said: “No, there is no understanding.”
‘I think the Russians wanted too much’
Neither side has publicly abandoned plans for Trump to meet with Putin. Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, was in Washington on Tuesday, where he posted on Facebook: “We have some serious days ahead”.
But two senior European diplomats said the postponement of the Rubio-Lavrov meeting was a sign that the US would be reluctant to go ahead with a Trump-Putin summit unless Moscow met its demands.
“I guess the Russians wanted a lot and it became clear to the Americans that there would be no deal for Trump in Budapest,” said one.
Another diplomat said the Russians “haven’t changed their position at all, and they’re not comfortable with ‘where they are.'” “And I assume Lavrov gave the same spell, and Rubio was like: ‘See you later’.”
Trump will not make any concessions to Europeans
Ukraine’s European allies are concerned that Trump could meet Putin a second time without receiving any serious concessions from the Russian leader.
In a statement on Tuesday, the leaders of European powers, including Britain, France, Germany and the European Union, said they “strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting must stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point for negotiations.”
Trump has often shifted his emphasis in public when talking about Ukraine. But last Friday, when he met with Zelinsky at the White House, he clearly endorsed the position that the cease-fire should begin with forces in their current positions.
Reuters and other news organizations reported that Trump’s closed-door meeting with Zelenskyi was contentious, with the US president repeatedly using profanity and pressuring Zelenskyi to accept some Russian demands.
But Zelinsky painted the meeting as a success because it ended with Trump publicly backing Q’s long-standing position, Fire on Current Lines.
European leaders are due to meet with Zelenskiy as their guest this week, first at an EU summit and then at a meeting of “coalition of alliances” countries to discuss a security force to guarantee a post-war settlement in Ukraine. Russia rejects such an international security force.
Putin’s choice of Budapest as the venue for the Trump meeting is controversial within the European Union, where Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is an outlier as one of the few leaders to maintain warm relations with Russia.
Any trip to Budapest would require Putin to pass through the airspace of other EU countries. Poland said on Tuesday it could impound Putin’s plane and arrest him on an international warrant if it flew over its territory, but Bulgaria said Putin could use its airspace to reach the meeting.
