Plans for Trump and Putin to meet in Budapest shelved

The White House is walking back President Donald Trump's plan for talks on ending the three-year-old Russian war against Ukraine just days after he claimed he would meet with Vladimir Putin in Budapest next month.

- ANDREW FEINBERG IN WASHINGTON DC

A White House official told The Independent there are “no plans” for a sit-down between Mr Trump and Mr Putin “in the immediate future” because secretary of state Marco Rubio had conducted a “productive call” with his Russian counterpart, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, which made an in-person meeting between the two top diplomats “not necessary”.

Mr Trump later told reporters at a Diwali celebration yesterday that he did not want to have “a wasted meeting” or “a waste of time” but did not rule out a meeting in the future.

“We'll see what happens,” he said, adding later that there could be updates on a possible sit-down in “the next two days.”

News of the scrapped meeting plans comes just days after what Mr Trump described as a similarly “productive” call with Mr Putin on the eve of last Friday’s visit by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.