Trump cancels summit with Putin

The U.S. President did not rule out that he could meet his Russian counterpart at a later date.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called off his planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, saying he does not believe the talks would yield the desired results at this stage of the dialogue. Moscow has yet to comment.

Trump made the announcement during a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the White House on Wednesday, saying the planned summit in Hungary “did not feel right.”

“It did not feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get, so I cancelled it,” he said.

However, Trump did not rule out holding talks with Moscow at a later date. “But we will do it [the summit] in the future,” he added, without specifying when or where such a meeting might take place.

Trump’s remarks come shortly after the US Treasury Department unveiled additional sanctions on Russia, citing its ”lack of serious commitment to a peace process.” The restrictions targeted two of Russia’s largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, as well as their subsidiaries.

However, the US President admitted that he was not sure whether the new sanctions would change Russia’s stance on the Ukraine conflict. “Hopefully he [Putin] will become reasonable, and hopefully [Ukraine’s Vladimir] Zelensky will be reasonable too,” he said. “It takes two to tango.”

Plans for a Putin–Trump summit were first announced last week after the two leaders spoke by phone, though no specific date had been set.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said the Russia–US meeting should be preceded by “serious preparations,” emphasizing that a summit between the two leaders “should not be wasted,” as both presidents “are accustomed to working for a result.”