FT: US cancels Trump-Putin Budapest summit after Moscow sends memo to Washington

The US has cancelled President Donald Trump’s planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, after Moscow sent a memo to Washington reiterating hardline demands on Ukraine, according to the Financial Times, which cited people familiar with the matter.

Trump and Putin had agreed last month to meet in the Hungarian capital to discuss ways to end the three-and-a-half-year-old war in Ukraine. 

The plan quickly unravelled after Russia’s foreign ministry sent a diplomatic note restating its conditions to address what Putin calls the “root causes” of the conflict — demands that included territorial concessions, a sharp reduction of Ukraine’s armed forces, and guarantees that the country would never join NATO, the Financial Times reported.

The memo was followed by a tense call between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. According to one person familiar with the exchange, Rubio told Trump that Moscow had shown “no willingness to negotiate.” Another person cited by FT said Trump “was not impressed with their position.”

The decision to scrap the Budapest summit marked a rapid reversal in US policy, coming less than a week after Trump appeared to tilt towards Putin’s position by backing away from plans to arm Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles. Officials in Washington had already begun expressing doubts about whether further talks with Moscow would yield progress unless Russia shifted its stance, the report added.

Lavrov’s uncompromising tone reportedly reinforced those doubts. During a brief, terse meeting with Rubio in New York in September, the Russian minister repeated discredited claims that Ukraine was in the grip of “Nazis,” according to the report. “Lavrov is clearly tired and seems to think he has better things to do than meet or engage with the United States, whatever President Putin may want,” one person familiar with the matter told FT.

Still, sources close to the administration reportedly said that Trump remains open to future talks “when and where he thinks there can be progress.”

Although Trump described his October 16 phone call with Putin as “very productive,” the Russian leader reportedly irritated him by boasting of Moscow’s battlefield successes near the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk and along the Oskil River, FT reported, citing people briefed on the conversation.

The day after the call, Trump reportedly pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a tense White House meeting to make territorial concessions to Russia, tossing Ukraine maps around and saying he was “sick” of them, according to FT.

Russian forces have since entered Kupiansk, with Zelenskyy acknowledging that the situation “remains difficult” while claiming Ukrainian troops had managed to “gain more control.” He vowed to continue defending their positions.

The Russian foothold west of the Oskil River provides another launch pad for assaults on the remaining parts of the Donbas region — territory that Putin demanded during his summit with Trump in Alaska in August, and again during their October call, as a condition to restart peace talks, the report said.

By Aghakazim Guliyev