The White House has clarified that President Donald Trump will not meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in the immediate future, despite the president’s recent social media announcement of a Budapest summit within two weeks. The clarification came Tuesday from a US official speaking on condition of anonymity.
The updated timeline follows a Monday telephone conversation between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that was originally intended to arrange logistics for a presidential summit. However, American officials have now determined that no additional in-person meeting between the foreign ministers is necessary, effectively postponing any Trump-Putin gathering indefinitely.
The US administration official characterized the Rubio-Lavrov phone call as “productive,” suggesting meaningful diplomatic exchange occurred despite the absence of concrete summit plans. The Kremlin has adopted a similar cautious approach, with Russian officials announcing Tuesday that there is no “precise timeframe” for organizing a meeting between Trump and Putin.
The diplomatic confusion began last Thursday after a telephone conversation between Trump and Putin that the American president initially portrayed as a breakthrough in bilateral relations. Trump’s optimism prompted him to announce on social media that he would meet Putin within two weeks in Budapest, an announcement made just before his scheduled meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss providing Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles.
Trump’s approach to Putin has been marked by abrupt policy changes, including the August decision to welcome Putin to Alaska for the Russian leader’s first visit to Western soil since launching the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Despite Trump’s previous claims that his personal chemistry with Putin would allow him to end the war within a day of returning to the White House, he has recently acknowledged experiencing frustrations in dealing with the Russian president.