"No wasted meetings": Trump cancels planned Budapest summit with Putin on Ukraine

• Trump canceled a planned Budapest summit with Putin over Ukraine.
• He said he did not want a “wasted” meeting.
• White House confirmed no immediate plans for the meeting.

US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has put on hold plans to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest over the Ukraine war, saying he did not want a “wasted” meeting.

The decision comes just days after Trump had announced a summit in the Hungarian capital within two weeks, following what he described as a productive phone call with Putin aimed at ending the conflict.

“I don't want to have a wasted meeting,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I don't want to have a waste of time, so I'll see what happens.”

Asked what prompted the reversal, he added, “A lot of things are happening on the war front. And we'll be notifying you over the next two days as to what we're doing.”

A White House official confirmed that there are currently “no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future.” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also canceled a previously expected preparatory meeting.

- Tense talks with Ukraine -

Trump recently held “tense” talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington, during which he reportedly pressed the Ukrainian leader to cede the eastern Donbas region in exchange for peace, a senior Ukrainian official told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Zelenskyy left the meeting without securing the requested long-range Tomahawk missiles.

The official described the discussions as “not easy” and said diplomatic efforts to end the war were “going in circles.” Trump had publicly called for both Moscow and Kyiv to stop fighting along current battle lines, without explicitly mentioning territorial concessions.

Ukraine has repeatedly rejected any notion of giving up the Donbas, a key industrial region in the east spanning Lugansk and Donetsk, considering it an inseparable part of its territory.

- European leaders respond -

The Kremlin said Tuesday that no “precise” date had been set for any new Trump-Putin meeting. European leaders have consistently opposed proposals for Ukraine to cede territory, instead advocating for a freeze along existing front lines.

In a joint statement, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Russia was not “serious about peace” and voiced support for ending the fighting at current positions.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is scheduled to meet Trump in Washington, while European leaders plan to convene in Brussels on Thursday and in London the following day to coordinate further support for Kyiv.