President Trump has shelved plans for another in-person meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, after Moscow rebuffed his call to freeze the Ukraine war along the current lines of control.
The announcement came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday. According to a source familiar with the discussion, the exchange made clear that the Kremlin was unwilling to adopt Trump’s proposed framework for ending the conflict.
“Secretary Rubio and Foreign Minister Lavrov had a productive call,” a White House official told The Post on Tuesday. “Therefore, 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.”
Trump had said last week that Rubio would head a senior U.S. delegation to meet face-to-face with Russian officials in hopes of paving the way for direct Trump-Putin talks in Budapest, Hungary.
Following his third White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky since returning to office, Trump urged both nations to halt fighting immediately and enter negotiations toward a lasting truce.
Zelensky readily embraced the plan, issuing a call for an immediate cease-fire and for peace talks to commence without delay.
However, on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the idea outright. The proposal would have allowed Ukraine to retain about 22% of the Donbas region that Russia has failed to seize despite more than a decade of war.
“This topic was repeatedly raised in various forms during contacts between Russia and the US. The Russian side answered every time, this answer is well known: The consistency of Russia’s position doesn’t change,” Peskov told local outlets, reiterating Moscow’s insistence that Ukraine surrender territory.
By Tuesday, Zelensky had joined with leaders from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, the European Commission, and the European Council to endorse Trump’s plan.
“We strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” the coalition declared in a joint statement.
The leaders accused Moscow of dragging out the process, saying that “Russia’s stalling tactics” have “shown time and time again that Ukraine is the only party serious about peace.”
“We can all see that Putin continues to choose violence and destruction. Therefore we are clear that Ukraine must be in the strongest position possible — before, during and after any cease-fire.”
The allied leaders are slated to meet again later this week to weigh new measures aimed at forcing Moscow’s hand — including the potential use of frozen Russian funds to help sustain Ukraine.
“We must ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defense industry until Putin is ready to make peace,” the group’s statement concluded. “We are developing measures to use the full value of Russia’s immobilized sovereign assets so that Ukraine has the resources it needs.”
{Matzav.com}
