Summit with Putin should not be ‘wasted time’ – Trump
The US president has declined to confirm reports that the planned meeting in Budapest was placed on hold
The potential meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest should not be “wasted,” US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday.
He made his comment after US media outlets reported that the summit in Budapest, agreed upon last week during a Putin-Trump phone call, had been placed on hold.
“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting, I don’t want to have a wasted time, so I’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office.
A journalist then asked the president why he thought the meeting “might be a wasted time.”
Trump replied, “I didn’t say it would. You never know what is going to happen. A lot of things are happening on the war front with Ukraine and Russia. We’ll be notifying you over the next two days as to what we are doing.” He would not say if the event was scrapped or postponed.
Putin and Trump held a rare in-person meeting in Alaska in August, and although no breakthroughs were achieved, both sides described it as a positive step toward peace in Ukraine and restoring bilateral ties.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke by phone on Monday, discussing ways to “collaborate on advancing a durable resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war,” according to the State Department.
