Plans to hold a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Budapest have been put on hold as Ukraine and its European allies rallied in pushing for a ceasefire without territorial concessions from Kyiv.
The White House said there were now “no plans” for the US president to meet his Russian counterpart “in the immediate future” as a round of diplomacy at the end of last week failed to yield any significant progress towards ending the war.
The comment followed a Monday phone call between Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, and Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, at which Lavrov said his country’s negotiating position remained unchanged.
Lavrov said: “I want to officially confirm: Russia has not changed its position compared to the understandings that were reached during the Alaska summit.” He had told Rubio this the day before, he added.
Putting the Budapest summit on hold represents the end of a short diplomatic cycle that began with a call last Thursday between Trump and Putin.
During that call, Putin reportedly proposed giving up parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzha provinces occupied by Russian forces, in return for all of Donetsk, a heavily fortified area long sought by Moscow but considered by Kyiv to be the gateway to central Ukraine.
After briefly appearing to flirt with Putin’s proposal, Trump rejected the plan on Sunday, saying Donetsk should be “cut the way it is”. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, the US leader said: “They can negotiate something later on down the line. But I said cut and stop at the battle line. Go home. Stop fighting, stop killing people.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he believed his country was on “the same page” as its western allies – but cautioned that Russia had become “less interested” in serious negotiations when Trump delayed a decision on whether he would supply Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.
Trump met Zelenskyy in Washington on Friday, a day after the US president’s call with Putin, in a tense meeting where the idea of Ukraine making territorial concessions was floated by the White House. This was rejected by Ukraine, but Kyiv’s efforts to persuade the US to sell it Tomahawk missiles also stalled.
Kyiv believes it can put Russia under greater military pressure if it is allowed to use the missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 miles. It wants to be able to strike Russian military industrial sites and oil refineries deep inside the country, a move that Kremlin has warned would be considered escalatory.
Earlier on Tuesday, Zelenskyy and the leaders of the UK, France, Germany and five other European countries endorsed Trump’s call for a ceasefire along the current frontlines. They emphasised “the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations” in a joint statement.
Signatories included Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, Georgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, and Donald Tusk, the Polish premier.
Political leaders of Finland, Norway and Denmark also endorsed the statement, as did the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and Antonia Costa, the president of European Council.
While Kyiv has said it is not prepared to recognise Russian annexation of any territory the invading forces hold, it has also indicated that it is willing to accept a ceasefire on the existing frontlines. That would amount to an acceptance of Moscow’s de facto occupation of about a fifth of the country, because Ukraine has proved unable to push out the invaders militarily.
Late on Tuesday, reports circulated that Ukraine and its European allies were working on a 12-point ceasefire proposal, an apparent echo of the 20-point US proposal designed to bring an end to the war in Gaza. A peace board chaired by Trump would oversee implementation, Bloomberg reported.
In the past Ukraine has also called for the return of children taken into Russia, and the handing over of prisoners of war, as part of the first phase of any ceasefire. Thirty western countries, led by the UK and France, have also agreed to provide a multi-national stabilisation force to prevent a future conflict by policing Ukraine’s airspace and sea lanes as well as training the country’s ground forces.
The European leaders also said that they must “ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defence industry” until Russia was ready to make peace – and indicated that EU and G7 discussions over the effective handing over of €140bn of Russian central bank assets to Ukraine were moving forward.
“We are developing measures to use the full value of Russia’s immobilised sovereign assets so that Ukraine has the resources it needs. Under a plan developed by the EU with the support of G7 members, Ukraine would be given the €140bn of frozen Russian central bank assets to help fund its national defence from 2026,” they said.
The money, mostly held at Euroclear in Belgium, would be structured in the form of a loan set against future Russian reparations for the war damage done to Ukraine. G7 members participating would club together to underwrite the debts to assure Belgium in case there were complications in the future.
