Trump-Putin Summit Collapses: Budapest Talks Abruptly Put on Hold

Plans for a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Budapest have been suspended, multiple U.S. and international outlets report, citing senior White House officials.

A White House representative confirmed to Reuters that “there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future.” The same source added that the recent call between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was “productive,” which made an in-person meeting between the two diplomats “unnecessary at this stage.”

The confirmation follows Trump’s earlier statement on October 16, when he announced that he would meet Putin in the Hungarian capital in the coming weeks to discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine. The planned summit, expected to be hosted by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was to be the second meeting between the two leaders since Trump’s return to office in January. Their first took place in Alaska on August 15 but ended without major progress.

NBC News correspondent Garrett Haake reported that, according to a senior White House official, “planning towards that Trump-Putin summit in Budapest is on hold.” The official explained that while Rubio and Lavrov’s phone conversation went well, Trump believes “both sides aren’t ready enough to talk to justify moving forward right now.”

Similar reports have been carried by the BBC, CBS News, and European Pravda, while Russian media claimed just hours earlier that preparations for the Budapest summit were “still ongoing,” though no date had been set.

Diplomatic sources told CNN that the decision to pause the process followed the postponement of a planned in-person meeting between Rubio and Lavrov, originally scheduled for October 23. The talks were intended to lay the groundwork for the Trump-Putin encounter but were delayed due to “divergent views” on how to resolve the conflict in Ukraine and Moscow’s “maximalist” position.

According to Reuters, the Kremlin’s refusal to agree to an immediate ceasefire may have also undermined the meeting plans. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that “there is no understanding” of when a summit could take place, emphasizing that any discussions about potential dates should not be handled “in a shouting-from-the-rooftops manner.”

Trump’s proposed meeting with Putin came just after his White House talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Kyiv reportedly sought new U.S. defense aid, including Tomahawk missiles, while Trump pushed for a ceasefire along the current front line, a proposal backed by several European partners but rejected by Moscow.

For now, both Washington and Moscow appear to have stepped back from holding the Budapest summit, leaving open questions about when, or whether, the next Trump-Putin meeting will take place.