A telephone conversation between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been described as “productive,” but it will not lead to an immediate meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a US official announced Tuesday. The development contradicts Trump’s recent social media posts claiming a Budapest summit would occur within two weeks.
The Monday phone call between the top diplomats was originally intended to arrange logistics for a presidential summit, but American officials have now determined that no additional face-to-face meeting between Rubio and Lavrov is necessary. This decision effectively places any potential Trump-Putin meeting on hold for the foreseeable future.
The US administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, provided no timeline for when a presidential summit might occur. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has also adopted a non-committal stance, with Russian officials stating Tuesday that there is no “precise timeframe” for organizing a meeting between the two leaders.
The confusion surrounding potential summit plans began after Trump and Putin spoke by telephone last Thursday, a conversation Trump initially portrayed as a diplomatic breakthrough. The American president quickly took to social media to announce he would meet Putin in Budapest within two weeks, an announcement timed just before his planned discussion with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about providing Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory.
Trump’s handling of relations with Putin has been characterized by dramatic reversals, including his August decision to host Putin in Alaska, marking the Russian leader’s first appearance on Western soil since initiating the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Despite Trump’s previous boasts about his ability to leverage personal chemistry with Putin to end the war quickly, he has recently acknowledged experiencing frustrations in dealing with the Russian president.