The meeting between American Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov scheduled for this week has been postponed, CNN learned from a White House official. Even after his phone conversation with Putin last Thursday, Donald Trump announced that their “senior advisers” will sit down to negotiate with each other this week.
Lavrov and Rubio already spoke on the phone on Monday this week and discussed the “next steps”. The Kremlin later called the phone conversation constructive, but according to CNN’s sources, the Russian position has not changed enough to go beyond the maximalist position. According to American officials, the United States and Russia have different expectations about ending the war, which may partly explain why this week’s meeting of foreign ministers has been postponed.
It is not yet known what effect this postponement will have on the Trump-Putin meeting in Budapest, according to CNN, in any case, the American president’s hopes for a quick meeting may be dashed. After Monday’s phone conversation, Rubio probably won’t recommend that the American and Russian presidents meet next week, as originally planned, but the two foreign ministers will still talk to each other this week.
“I would like to emphasize that it is not possible to postpone what was not agreed upon,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov responded to CNN’s reports to the Russian state news agency TASSZ, according to whom it is only speculation and that the meeting is currently under “consideration”.
Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he will meet the Russian president in Budapest. The news of the Budapest meeting unexpectedly affected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who left Washington after Friday’s meeting, if not empty-handed, but without concrete results. Soon after, Trump said that the best way to end the war was for the Ukrainians and Russians to divide the Donbas.
Zelenskiy later said that he did not think Budapest was the best place for the meeting, but that he would attend if invited. Meanwhile, according to Politico, EU leaders are lobbying to participate in the Budapest meeting. In this article, we wrote about what the parties can gain or lose from the Budapest meeting.
