Trump Cancels Meeting With Putin, Says ‘It Just Didn’t Feel Right To Me’ | World News

US President Donald Trump said that he canceled the meeting he planned to have with Russian President Vladimir Putin due to the lack of progress in diplomatic efforts.

“We canceled the meeting with President Putin,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

“It didn’t seem right to me.”

“I didn’t feel like we were going to get where we needed to go. That’s why I canceled it, but we will do it in the future,” Trump added.

Last week, after the phone call between the two leaders, he said that he would hold talks with Putin in Budapest, Hungary.

But such a meeting would be a “waste of time,” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.

Trump also expressed disappointment that negotiations have stalled.

“All I can say in terms of honesty is that every time I talk to Vladimir I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere. They don’t go anywhere,” he said.

The cancellation of the summit came after the White House announced new sanctions targeting Russian oil exports as part of a broader effort to pressure Moscow over its ongoing military operations in Ukraine.

Trump said he hoped the measures would be temporary.

For the first time in his second term, Trump imposed new sanctions by targeting Russia’s two largest oil companies in order to end the conflict in Ukraine.

The US Treasury Department has warned that future action targeting Russian companies (Rosneft and Lukoil) and their subsidiaries cannot be ruled out.

Meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House, Trump said he hoped “the war will be resolved.”

“These are very big sanctions. These are very big against two big oil companies. We hope they will not continue for a long time. We hope the war will end,” he added.

Trump also stated that his previous meetings with Russian President Putin did not yield any progress.

“Every time I talk to Vladimir, I have good conversations, and then they don’t go anywhere. They don’t go anywhere. He is waging a war. He is in a war. There are two sides that are very competent, and that’s what war is like. You never know the war, but I can say that now is the time to make an agreement,” he emphasized.

The decision to cancel the meeting was taken after a telephone conversation between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday.

Last week, Trump had a 2.5-hour phone call with the Russian President and said that “great progress” was made in the meeting.

A day after the meeting, Trump hosted his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House and described the meeting as “very interesting and cordial.”

“The meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was very interesting and cordial, but I told him, as I strongly suggested to President Putin, that it was time to stop the killings and make a DEAL,” the US President wrote on Truth Social.

Trump also suggested that both leaders should “stand where they are” and “declare victory.”

After brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, Trump turned his attention to the Russia-Ukraine war and stepped up efforts to end the conflict.

Trump’s highly publicized summit with Putin in Alaska in August ended without an agreement.