By America-Today    October 22, 2025

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Tuesday his plan for a swift meeting

with Russian leader Vladimir Putin was on hold because he doesn’t want it to be a “waste of

time.” It was the latest twist in Trump’s stop-and-go effort to resolve the war in Ukraine.

The decision to hold off on the meeting in Budapest, Hungary, which Trump had announced

last week, was made following a call Monday between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting,” Trump said. “I don’t want to have a waste of time

— so we’ll see what happens.”

Trump’s hesitancy will likely come as a relief to European leaders, who have accused Putin

of stalling for time with diplomacy while trying to gain ground on the battlefield. The leaders

— including the British prime minister, French president and German chancellor — said they

opposed any push to make Ukraine surrender land captured by Russian forces in return for

peace, as Trump most recently has suggested.