Trump: Don't want 'wasted' meeting with Russian Prez

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he had shelved plans for a summit in Budapest with Russia's Vladimir Putin on the Ukraine war because he did not want a “wasted” meeting.

- Agencies

Trump's reversal came just days after he announced that he would meet Putin in the Hungarian capital within two weeks, following what he called a productive phone call to end Russia’s war.

The US leader pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to give up the eastern Donbas region in exchange for peace during “tense” talks last Friday in Washington, a senior Ukrainian official told AFP.

But on Tuesday, a White House official said that there were now “no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future” despite the Budapest announcement.

“I don't want to have a wasted meeting,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked why the Putin encounter had been put on ice. “I don’t want to have a waste of time, so I'll see what happens.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also called off an expected meeting to arrange the Budapest summit after speaking by phone on Monday, the White House said.