US shelves plans for Trump-Putin talks in Budapest

Plans to hold a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Budapest have been put on hold as Ukraine and its European allies rallied behind the US in pushing for a ceasefire without territorial concessions from Kyiv.

The White House said there were now “no plans” for the US president to meet his Russian counterpart “in the immediate future” as a round of diplomacy at the end of last week failed to yield any significant progress towards ending the war.

The statement followed a Monday phone call between Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, and Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, at which Lavrov said his country’s negotiating position remained unchanged.

Lavrov said: “I want to officially confirm: Russia has not changed its position compared to the understandings that were reached during the Alaska summit.” He had told Rubio this the day before, he added.

Putting the Budapest summit on hold represents the end of a short diplomatic cycle that began with a call last Thursday between Trump and Putin.

During that call, Putin reportedly proposed giving up parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzha provinces occupied by Russian forces, in return for all of Donetsk, a heavily fortified area long sought by Moscow but considered by Kyiv to be the gateway to central Ukraine.

After briefly appearing to flirt with Putin’s proposal, Trump rejected the plan on Sunday, saying Donetsk should be “cut the way it is”. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, the US leader said: “They can negotiate something later on down the line. But I said cut and stop at the battle line. Go home. Stop fighting, stop killing people.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he believed his country was on “the same page” as its western allies – but cautioned that Russia had become “less interested” in serious negotiations when Trump delayed a decision on whether he would supply Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.

Trump met Zelenskyy in Washington on Friday, a day after the US president’s call with Putin, in a tense meeting where the idea of Ukraine making territorial concessions was floated by the White House. This was rejected by Ukraine, but Kyiv’s efforts to persuade the US to sell it Tomahawk missiles also stalled.

Kyiv believes it can put Russia under greater military pressure if it is allowed to use the missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 miles. It wants to be able to strike Russian military industrial sites and oil refineries deep inside the country, a move that the Kremlin has warned would be considered escalatory.