Donald Trump no longer plans to meet Vladimir Putin in Hungary, the White House confirmed.
The US president will not meet the Russian leader in the “immediate future” after a phone call between negotiators from both countries to prepare for peace talks went sour.
On Thursday, Trump said he would meet Putin in Budapest once senior advisers from both sides held talks.
Sources told The Telegraph that Moscow had canceled plans to hold a preparatory meeting in person.
Trump intended for officials from each side to meet in Hungary to prepare for the summit.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke by phone on Monday. As it turned out, the call did not go well.
Lavrov is believed to have told Rubio that Russia would not agree to freeze the current front line in Ukraine during the tense phone call.
However, the White House on Tuesday called the call “productive” and added: “Therefore, an additional in-person meeting between the Secretary and the Secretary of State is not necessary, and there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future.”
Lavrov refused to budge on Moscow’s maximalist position in talks with Rubio.
“I want to officially confirm: Russia has not changed its position compared to the understandings reached during the Alaska summit,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow after reports of his call with his American counterpart.
Ukrainian and European sources were encouraged by Russia’s refusal to negotiate amid fears that Volodymyr Zelensky would be pressured to cede territory to Moscow as the price for peace.
The Coalition of the Willing, a group of allied European nations, issued a statement accusing Putin of “delaying tactics” in his talks with Trump.
“We can all see that Putin continues to choose violence and destruction,” the statement added.
Since meeting the US president in Alaska, Putin has demanded that Ukraine withdraw from its eastern regions of Donbas, Donetsk and Luhansk, as a precondition for peace.
Trump reportedly pressured Zelensky to accept this proposal in a forceful meeting at the White House on Friday.
Trump spoke with Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Friday – HANDOUT/AFP
However, the surrender of Donetsk, which Moscow has failed to fully occupy since 2014, remains a red line for the Ukrainian president, who has said he would only negotiate on the basis of current front lines.
Speaking to reporters, Trump appeared to back the Ukrainian position, insisting that he wanted the fighting to “stop on the lines where they are, the battle lines.”
On Tuesday, the Kremlin said no clear date had been set for the meeting.
“Listen, we have an understanding with the presidents, but we cannot postpone what has not been finalized,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
“Neither President Trump nor President Putin gave exact dates.”