There are no plans for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to meet in the near future. This was first reported to the BBC by a White House source who requested anonymity. The news was later confirmed by the White House to Telex. They wrote, “President Trump has no intention of meeting with President Putin in the near future.”

The US president announced on October 16 that he expected to meet with the Russian president in Budapest within two weeks. Trump wrote that during their phone conversation, he and Putin agreed that their foreign ministers would meet this week to prepare for the meeting.

Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio spoke by phone on Monday. However, CNN reported after the call that the Trump-Putin meeting could be postponed after US officials felt that the Russian position had not changed enough to move beyond a maximalist stance. Sergey Lavrov called the report false on Tuesday.

Two senior European diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the Russians probably wanted too much at the foreign ministers' meeting, making it clear to Trump that they could not make a deal in Budapest. After Lavrov said they were not willing to stop at the current front line, Rubio dropped the idea of a face-to-face meeting.

Trump and Putin last met in Alaska in August. However, their talks did not yield any substantive results.