The planned meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest is being put on hold.
Several media outlets reported on Tuesday that the planned meeting would not take place.
When asked why the meeting in Hungary has been put on hold, Trump says he has not yet made a final decision about the meeting, which he wanted to hold in Budapest.
"I didn't want a wasted meeting," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
He also said that you never know what's going to happen, but there are things happening on that front. Trump hinted that we'll know more in a couple of days.
According to The Telegraph, the reason is that a bad atmosphere arose in a telephone conversation between the two countries' foreign ministers. On Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had a telephone conversation in which progress was made in the preparations, according to both countries. The AP news agency is also informed that the meeting was put on hold after the conversation.
However, it was described as productive by both countries.
– Therefore, a further physical meeting between the foreign ministers is unnecessary, and there are no plans for President Trump to meet President Putin in the immediate future, an unnamed official tells The Telegraph.
According to the newspaper, Lavrov reportedly told Rubio in the conversation that Russia would not agree to freeze the front lines as they are now.
The meeting was supposed to be one of the first planning steps towards a new summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
When the two presidents spoke by phone last Thursday, they agreed to meet in Budapest, Hungary, within two weeks. However, no specific date was ever set.
