What Trump wants from Putin, after the cancellation of the Budapest summit. The White House names the condition for a future meeting
US President Donald Trump's spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, holds the daily press briefing at the White House. Photo: Ron Sachs/CNP / SplashNews.com / Profimedia
The White House assured on Thursday that a new summit between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is not excluded, but warned that the American president “wants to see actions, not just words” from Putin for a ceasefire in Ukraine, Reuters and EFE agencies write.
“A meeting between the two leaders is not completely out of the question. I think the president (Trump) and the entire administration hope that one day this can happen again, but we want to make sure that there is a tangible positive outcome from this meeting and that it is not a waste of time for the president,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt explained at a news conference.
“In order to negotiate a good peace agreement, both sides must be interested”, but the American president “has not lately noticed enough interest from Russia to take steps to advance towards peace”, which is why the leader of the White House decided on Wednesday sanctions against the Russian oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil, the spokeswoman continued, according to Agerpres.
“The president wants to see action, not just talk. And I think the president is very motivated by the success of his Middle East peace deal to get results and he wants this war to end. He's been saying that for nine months in office, and he's increasingly unhappy with the lack of progress on both sides of this war,” Karoline Leavitt pointed out.
She added that the sanctions announced Wednesday “are quite robust,” referring to reports in several publications that China plans to reduce purchases of Russian oil due to fears of secondary sanctions from the US.
In a telephone conversation that Trump had last Thursday with Putin, before the meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, the American leader said that in the discussion with the Russian president “great progress has been made” towards the end of the war between Moscow and Kiev and that he will have a new summit with his Russian counterpart, in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, in the next two weeks.
Putin's claims
According to some sources, in that discussion Putin would have diminished his claims compared to those formulated at the summit held with Trump in August, in Alaska. The Russian president is said to have suggested returning to Ukraine small portions occupied by Russian troops in the southern Ukrainian provinces of Kherson and Zaporozhye in exchange for full Russian control in the Donbas, after in August he proposed that Ukraine withdraw completely from the Donbas and in return Russia would only freeze the rest of the front line.
However, after this new discussion, Russia sent the United States an informal document in which it maintains its positions formulated at the first Trump-Putin summit and in addition refused any ceasefire before the negotiations.
Therefore, Trump announced on Tuesday that the new summit with Putin will no longer take place, as he does not want “futile” talks or “wasting time”.
Reacting to this statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “no one wants to waste time, neither President Trump nor President Putin”, insisting that the summit needs good preparation in advance to be successful.
According to Peskov, the preparation of such a meeting was to provide some clarity on the agenda of the discussions and the agreements that may result.
Rubio never met with Lavrov either
But the head of American diplomacy, Marco Rubio, and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in turn canceled a meeting that they were also going to have in Budapest to prepare for the Trump-Putin summit.
Russian Deputy Minister Sergei Ryabkov confirmed on Wednesday that “there is no agreement” on a Lavrov-Rubio meeting.
On the other hand, Ryabkov criticized the “deliberate attempts of the opponents of the conclusion of an agreement (on Ukraine) to reduce the chances of getting it”, a reference to the European supporters of Ukraine.
The first summit of Presidents Trump and Putin, held in Alaska on August 15, did not lead to results for a prospect of ending the Russian-Ukrainian war, as Russia is primarily concerned with territorial issues, while Kiev and its European allies are concerned with security guarantees for Ukraine, especially the deployment of troops in this country, an idea categorically rejected by Moscow.
