Plans for a Trump-Putin meeting were shelved days after the proposed talks in Budapest

There are “no plans” for US President Donald Trump to meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin “in the near future,” a White House official said.

Trump said last Thursday that he and the Russian president would hold talks in Budapest within two weeks to discuss the war in Ukraine.

A preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov was due to take place this week, but the White House said the two had a “productive” conversation and that the meeting was no longer “necessary”.

The White House did not share more details about why the talks were halted.

Trump had discussed the Budapest summit by phone with Putin a day before he met Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House.

Some reports suggest his talks with Zelensky were a “meeting”, with sources suggesting Trump forced him to give up large swaths of eastern Ukraine as part of a deal with Russia.

But on Monday, Trump accepted a cease-fire proposal backed by Kiev and European leaders to freeze the conflict on the current front line.

“Let it be cut as it is,” he said.

Russia has repeatedly opposed freezing the current line of contact.

Moscow is only interested in “long-term, sustainable peace”, Lavrov said on Tuesday, implying that a frontline freeze would mean only a temporary ceasefire.

The “root causes of the conflict” must be addressed, Lavrov said, using Kremlin shorthand for a series of maximalist demands that include recognizing Russia’s full sovereignty over the Donbass as well as the demilitarization of Ukraine – a non-starter for Kiev and its European partners.

Zelensky said the front line discussions were “the beginning of diplomacy” but Russia was “doing everything to avoid diplomacy”.

He also said the only topic that could make Moscow “pay attention” was the delivery of long-range weapons to Ukraine.

Putin’s unscheduled call with Trump last Thursday came ahead of speculation that the US was preparing to send long-range Tomahawk missiles into Ukraine that could potentially strike deep into Russia.

Zelensky said the Tomahawk issue forced Russia to open a discussion. The missile talks turned out to be “a strong investment in diplomacy,” he added.