Donald Trump’s crunch meeting with Vladimir Putin in Hungary has been called off, the White House has confirmed.
The United States president will no longer sit down with his Russian counterpart in the “immediate future” to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Following the Anchorage Summit in August, Trump had announced he would hold a second in-person meeting with Mr Putin in Budapest on Thursday.
But preparations for the encounter stalled when the Kremlin cancelled a preparatory discussion between Sergei Lavrov and Marco Rubio.
In a tense phone call on Monday, Russia’s foreign minister is believed to have told the US secretary of state that Moscow would not accept European leaders’ proposal to freeze the current frontline.
Ukrainian premier Volodymyr Zelensky said ceasefire discussions were the "beginning of diplomacy" but that Russia was "doing everything to avoid diplomacy".
On Tuesday, a White House spokesman said: “An additional in-person meeting between the secretary and foreign minister is not necessary, and there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future.”
Meanwhile, Mr Lavrov said in a statement: “Russia has not changed its position compared to the understandings that were reached during the Alaska summit.”
Mr Lavrov added that Russia was only interested in "long-term, sustainable peace", implying that the current offer would only amount to a temporary peace deal.
The “coalition of the willing”, a group of nation states chaired by Britain and France, accused Russia of “stalling tactics”.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has convened a meeting of its 30 members in London on Friday, which Mr Zelensky is set to attend.
Russia is continuing to push for further concessions from Ukraine, including the complete surrender of Donetsk.
Last week, Mr Putin told Mr Trump that he would pull his forces out of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in exchange for the Donbas.
Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s special envoy, told Mr Zelensky in Washington on Monday that Russia had a constitutional claim to these lands.
In return, the US has offered Ukraine NATO-style protections without the need for them to officially join the military bloc.
