Daijiworld Media Network - Washington
Washington, Oct 23: US President Donald Trump has cancelled his scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that ongoing diplomatic efforts between Washington and Moscow have failed to yield meaningful results.
“We cancelled the meeting with President Putin. It just didn’t feel right to me,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it, but we’ll do it in the future.”
The meeting, originally planned to take place in Budapest following a phone call between the two leaders, was called off amid growing frustration in Washington over stalled negotiations and Russia’s continued military operations in Ukraine. Earlier this week, Trump had already hinted that the talks would be “a waste of time.”
“Every time I speak with Vladimir, we have good conversations, and then they don’t go anywhere,” Trump said, expressing disappointment over the lack of tangible progress.
The cancellation coincided with the White House’s announcement of new sanctions targeting Russia’s energy sector. The measures, the first imposed by Trump in his second term, focus on major oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil, along with their subsidiaries. The sanctions aim to increase pressure on Moscow to end its invasion of Ukraine.
“These are tremendous sanctions — very big, against their two big oil companies,” Trump said during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “We hope that they won’t be on for long. We hope that the war will be settled.”
The decision followed a phone discussion between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday. Just a week earlier, Trump had spoken with Putin for over two hours, describing the exchange as “great progress.”
A day after that call, Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, calling their discussion “cordial and constructive.” On Truth Social, he wrote, “I told him, as I likewise strongly suggested to President Putin, that it is time to stop the killing, and make a DEAL!”
Following his mediation efforts in Gaza, Trump has turned his attention toward ending the Russia-Ukraine war, though his previous summit with Putin in Alaska in August ended without any breakthrough.
“It’s time to make a deal,” Trump reiterated, calling for both sides to “stop where they are” and “claim victory.”