If there was any trepidation in the White House over the prospect that a second face-to-face meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin would turn out to be as unproductive as the first, it looks like the administration doesn’t have to worry about it. A proposed bilateral summit between the two presidents in Budapest seems to be on hold.
Late last week, Trump revealed that he and Putin had “agreed that there will be a meeting” as soon as this week, but on Monday, the Kremlin scuttled a preparatory meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. Moscow subsequently informed the White House that the timing of a potential second Trump-Putin summit would have to remain up in the air for now. The Russians are dragging their feet, and why wouldn’t they? Putin already got what he wanted from Trump: an indefinite pause on the provision of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.
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