Trump-Putin Summit in Budapest Officially Cancelled Over Ukraine Deadlock

The White House has officially cancelled the planned summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting, which was tentatively scheduled to be held in Budapest, Hungary, has been shelved after a breakdown in preparatory talks, primarily concerning the war in Ukraine.
President Trump confirmed the cancellation to reporters, stating, “We canceled the meeting with President Putin—it just didn’t feel right to me.” He elaborated that he was not confident the summit would lead to a tangible outcome, saying, “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I canceled it, but we’ll do it in the future.”
The decision marks a rapid reversal in diplomacy. The summit was first proposed during a “very productive” phone call between the two leaders on October 16, 2025, aimed at finding a diplomatic end to the war. However, optimism quickly faded.
According to sources familiar with the negotiations, the collapse was triggered by a diplomatic memo from Moscow to Washington. This memo reportedly reiterated Russia’s hardline demands for ending the conflict, including territorial concessions from Ukraine and a permanent guarantee that Ukraine would never be permitted to join NATO.
This uncompromising stance was reinforced in a subsequent, tense phone call between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The lack of any flexibility from Moscow led the White House to conclude that the summit would be a “waste of time.” President Trump was reportedly “not impressed with their position,” especially after Russian officials boasted of recent battlefield successes near Kupiansk.
The cancellation signals a hardening of the U.S. stance. In the days following the summit’s collapse, the Trump administration announced new sanctions against Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, in a move to cut off revenues financing the war.
The Kremlin expressed “regret” over the cancellation but stated its “general readiness” to hold a meeting in the future, provided it is “thoroughly prepared.” Russian officials, including Putin himself, have publicly referred to the cancellation as a “postponement.” However, with new U.S. sanctions in place and no movement on Russia’s core demands, there are no plans for a rescheduled summit in the “immediate future.”