President Donald Trump has reportedly canceled a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin while also announcing new oil sanctions on Moscow.
The White House said the decision to cancel the meeting came after what officials described as stalled diplomatic exchanges with Russia, with few signs of progress toward a ceasefire with Ukraine.
The planned summit, which was expected to take place in Budapest, had been seen as a potential opening for renewed negotiations, though it was ultimately shelved amid frustration over the difficulties encountered throughout the negotiation process.
Trump told reporters at the White House that he personally decided to scrap the talks after concluding that the meeting would not achieve meaningful results.
“We canceled the meeting with President Putin — it just didn’t feel right to me,” said the President, per Reuters. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I canceled it, but we’ll do it in the future.”
Trump said he had grown increasingly skeptical of Russia’s willingness to engage in good-faith discussions about ending the conflict, implying that Putin has made false promises during the negotiations.
“In terms of honesty, the only thing I can say is, every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations, and then they don’t go anywhere. They just don’t go anywhere,” Trump explained, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, Trump administration officials said the United States will impose new sanctions targeting Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, in a move expected to create tension between the two countries, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
While this move is expected to affect Russia’s economy, it also represents a shift away from Trump’s previous foreign policy toward a seemingly stricter approach to advancing peace between Ukraine and Russia.
Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of the political analysis firm R.Politik, said these sanctions are severe, but that Putin has shown a willingness to undergo losses to also claim victories.
“They’ll shrug their shoulders and say, ‘OK, he’ll ripen in three months,’” she explained, per The New York Times. “For Putin, this war remains existential, and he is ready to endure a lot.”
Currently, there have been no plans announced for Trump and Putin to meet to discuss further ways to end both the war in Ukraine and the sanctions being imposed by the U.S.