A senior White House official told NBC News this week that President Donald Trump will not meet in person with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in the near future, the outlet reported Oct. 21.
The statement comes days after Trump said that he had a productive phone conversation with Putin and that he planned to meet with Putin in Budapest, Hungary, soon to discuss bringing the war to an end, as CatholicVote previously reported.
NBC News reported that a senior White House official said talks toward planning the in-person meeting are now “on hold.”
A second White House official said according to NBC News that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a “productive” phone conversation.
“Therefore, an additional-in-person meeting between the Secretary and Foreign Minister is not necessary,” the official said, “and there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future.”
NBC News reported that the first senior White House official said Trump decided to pause the planning for an in person meeting after he was briefed on the Rubio-Lavrov call, “believing that both sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict were not ready to seriously talk peace.”
According to Axios, the Kremlin stated that a date for a Trump-Putin summit was never set. The outlet added that a spokesperson for Putin said, “You can’t postpone what was not scheduled.”
NBC reported that Lavrov said Oct. 21 that he and Rubio did discuss how to set up a “framework for the next meeting.”
“The key point is not the venue or timing,” Lavrov said, “but how we will proceed substantively on the tasks that were agreed upon and on which broad understanding was reached in Anchorage.”
In August, Trump and Putin met in Alaska, as CatholicVote previously reported.
A peace deal was not reached at the time, but Trump commented after the meeting, “I believe we had a very productive meeting,” Trump said. “There were many, many points that we agreed on, most of them, I would say, a couple of big ones that we haven’t quite gotten there, but we’ve made some headway.”
Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Oct. 17. CatholicVote reported that Zelenskyy proposed a deal to trade Ukraine’s drone technology for U.S. Tomahawk missiles. NBC News reported that after the meeting, Zelenskyy said Trump did not say “‘no,’ but for today, didn’t say ‘yes.’”
In a Truth Social post, Trump described the meeting as “very interesting and cordial,” but added, “I told him, as I likewise strongly suggested to President Putin, that it is time to stop the killing, and make a DEAL!”
“Enough blood has been shed, with property lines being defined by War and Guts. They should stop where they are,” he said. “Let both claim Victory, let History decide! No more shooting, no more Death, no more vast and unsustainable sums of money spent.”
He said the war would have never began if he were president at the time and concluded: “Thousands of people being slaughtered each and every week — NO MORE, GO HOME TO YOUR FAMILIES IN PEACE!”
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