Hopes for a Budapest summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are fading fast. On Tuesday, a US official stated there are “no plans” for the two leaders to meet in the “immediate future,” directly contradicting Trump’s claims from last week.
The Kremlin also dampened expectations, stating that “no precise timeframe” has been established for any potential meeting.
This unified message from Moscow and Washington follows a period of mixed signals. Last Thursday, Trump spoke with Putin by phone and quickly posted on social media that a summit in Hungary was just two weeks away.
That announcement spurred a “productive” call on Monday between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to hash out details.
But the US official, speaking anonymously, said that after the call, no further in-person diplomatic meeting was needed. This abrupt shift occurs as Trump was also slated to meet Ukraine’s president to discuss providing advanced Tomahawk missiles.