In the “latest abrupt shift” by President Trump, his planned Budapest summit with Vladimir Putin now has “no precise timeframe,” according to the Kremlin.
A US official confirmed this on Tuesday, stating “no plans” exist for a meeting in the “immediate future.” This is a direct contradiction of Trump’s post last week claiming a summit was two weeks away.
That post followed a “progress” call with Putin and led to a “productive” call on Monday between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The US official, speaking anonymously, said that after the diplomats’ call, no further in-person meeting was “necessary.”
This reversal comes after Trump hosted Putin in Alaska in August and as he was scheduled to meet Ukraine’s president to discuss Tomahawk missiles.