Washington — There are “no plans” for a meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the “immediate future,” a White House official said Tuesday.
The official told CBS News that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a “productive call,” and a future in-person meeting between Rubio and Lavrov is “not necessary.” The State Department said that Rubio and Lavrov spoke on Monday.
“There are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future,” the official said.
Mr. Trump told reporters later Tuesday that he didn’t want to “have a wasted meeting.”
“I don’t want to have a waste of time here. I’ll see what happens,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “We’ll see what happens. We haven’t made a determination.”
“We’ll be notifying you over the next two days as to what we’re doing. But a lot of things are happening. I think we’re gonna get it solved,” Mr. Trump said.
“I think Putin wants it to end, and I think Zelensky wants it to end, and I think it’s going to end,” the president added.
Mr. Trump spoke with Putin last week, after which he announced that he would meet the Russian president in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss a possible end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The president did not say when the meeting would take place. He also previewed “high level” meetings between the U.S. and Russia, led by Rubio.
Mr. Trump called his discussion with Putin “very productive.” It came one day before he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House.
Rubio and Lavrov’s conversation focused on “next steps” after Mr. Trump and Putin’s discussion last week, according to State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott.
“The Secretary emphasized the importance of upcoming engagements as an opportunity for Moscow and Washington to collaborate on advancing a durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war, in line with President Trump’s vision,” Pigott said.
But Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov indicated Tuesday that a meeting may be a long way off.
“Preparation is needed, serious preparation,” he told reporters, according to the Associated Press.
Mr. Trump and Putin met in Anchorage, Alaska, in August for discussions about Russia’s war in Ukraine, though the summit yielded no tangible results. Instead, Moscow has not let up on its military aggression, continuing to launch drone and missile strikes across Ukraine.
The president has pushed for a ceasefire in Ukraine, and on Sunday, he called for an immediate halt in the war that would see Russia maintaining control of territory it invaded in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
“Let it be cut the way it is. It’s cut up right now. I think 78% of the land is already taken by Russia. You leave it the way it is right now,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One, apparently referring to the Donbas region. “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.”
Mr. Trump on Tuesday appeared to reiterate this idea, saying, “I said, go to the line. Go to the line of battle, the battlefield lines. And you pull back and you go home, and everybody take some time off, because you got two countries that are killing each other. Two countries are losing 5,000 to 7,000 soldiers a week.”
But the president has at times expressed conflicting views on the war in Ukraine, and specifically over Russia’s occupation of parts of eastern Ukraine, including territories it captured in 2014 and during the current conflict, which began in February 2022.
Mr. Trump said last month Ukraine was in a “position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”
“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not?” he wrote on social media after meeting with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
The president called Russia’s military a “paper tiger.”
Zelenskyy, however, has rejected the prospect of ceding any Russian-occupied ground. The Ukrainian leader said he is urging Europe to put “the right kind of pressure” on Russia. He and European leaders said in a joint statement Tuesday that they support Mr. Trump’s call for an immediate stop in fighting and said the “current line of contact should be the starting point for negotiations.”
But they also accused Russia of employing “stalling tactics” that undermine any suggestion it is seeking peace.
“We can all see that Putin continues to choose violence and destruction,” the European leaders said.
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