Trump-Putin meeting plans postponed – DW – 10/22/2025

US President Donald Trump has said that his plans to meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in the near future have been postponed because he did not want it to be a “waste of time”.

Trump made this comment to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

The decision to put off the potential meeting in Budapest, which Trump had announced last week, was taken after a call on Monday between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Russia also did not appear to be in any hurry. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that the Trump-Putin summit “requires … serious preparation.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is trying to strengthen Ukraine’s position by acquiring long-range Tomahawk missiles from the US, although Trump has not yet agreed to deliver the weapons.

“We need to end this war and only pressure will bring peace,” Zelensky said in a Telegram post on Tuesday.

A planned meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Budapest, Hungary has been put on hold, Reuters and AFP news agencies reported, citing unnamed US officials.

The decision was reportedly taken after a phone call between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was no rush for the two leaders to meet, adding that “serious preparation” was needed. He stressed that there has been no formal postponement of the meeting, as no specific date has been decided yet.

Both European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have accused Putin of stalling timely diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

Moscow has demanded Kiev make territorial concessions before reaching any ceasefire agreement.

Trump met with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska on August 15. Few concrete outcomes of the summit were made public, and there was no mention of a ceasefire or steps towards one.

The mayor of the Ukrainian capital and the Ukrainian Air Force said on Wednesday that Russia had attacked Kiev overnight.

Vitali Klitschko said that Ukraine’s air defense units were trying to deflect the attacks.

“Stay in shelters!” Klitschko posted on Telegram.

Klitschko said the city was being targeted by ballistic missiles and that a district in southern Kiev was on fire after an explosion.

Ukraine’s air force said ballistic missiles and drones were being launched in the attacks, which were targeting several regions, including Kharkiv, Kherson and Odessa, in addition to the capital Kiev.

On Tuesday, multiple Russian bombings of energy infrastructure left hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region without power and some without water.

Officials have said repairs have been hampered by the threat of drone attacks, with all power supplies in the regional capital cut off.

The latest attack, which also hit the neighboring Sumy region, is the latest in a series of Russian attacks targeting the Ukrainian energy grid ahead of winter.

“Due to continued attacks by Russian drones, emergency teams are unable to begin work on restoring power supplies in the Chernihiv region,” a statement from the energy minister on Telegram said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky later wrote that repairs were underway. “Russia’s strategy is to kill people and terrorize them out of the cold,” he said.

“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin pretends to be ready for diplomacy and peace talks, while in fact this night Russia launched a brutal missile and drone attack,” Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiha said on Twitter.

Moscow has sharply increased the frequency of airstrikes across Ukraine in recent weeks, leaving areas in darkness for several hours and sometimes days.

Trump again puts pressure on Ukraine to reach a deal with Putin

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Russian and Belarusian athletes will not be able to compete in their disciplines at next year’s Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina, the International Ski Federation (FIS) said on Tuesday.

Skiing and snowboarding competitors from Russia and Belarus have been banned from FIS events since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but they had hoped to participate under a neutral banner in the winter edition of the Games.

“The FIS Council met this Tuesday and voted not to facilitate the participation of athletes from Russia and Belarus as individual neutral athletes (AINs) in FIS qualification events for the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games and Paralympic Games,” FIS said.

At the 2022 Beijing Games, Russia won almost a third of all cross-country skiing medals.

The Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics will take place between February 6 and 22 next year.

Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday its forces had attacked a “major” chemical plant in the Bryansk region of southern Russia.

A statement from the General Staff said the plant was attacked in a combined attack of missiles and air strikes, successfully penetrating Russian air defenses.

This plant produces gunpowder, explosives and rocket fuel.

Polish officials said Poland’s intelligence service has detained eight people accused of acts of sabotage on behalf of Russia.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in an ex-post that suspects have been detained in different parts of the country for the past several days.

A spokesman for intelligence coordinator Tomasz Siemioniak said one of the suspects was a 21-year-old Ukrainian citizen.

His two accomplices, also Ukrainian citizens and aged 21 and 24, were cleared in Romania.

According to Siemioniak, they are suspected of “reconnaissance of military facilities and critical infrastructure”.

Romania’s domestic intelligence service said two suspects had handed over two packages filled with explosive devices to the Bucharest office of Ukrainian courier company Nova Post.

Romanian intelligence said its agents had defused the devices.

With expectations rising over US President Donald Trump’s next face-to-face meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, European leaders have said the existing battle lines in Ukraine should be the starting point for any peace talks.

After meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House last week, Trump is expected to meet Putin in Budapest in the next few weeks.

In a statement on Tuesday, the leaders of European powers including Britain, Germany and the EU said they “strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting must stop immediately, and the current line of contact must be the starting point of negotiations.”

After meeting with Zelensky last Friday, Trump publicly supported Ukraine’s position that there should be an immediate ceasefire along the current battle line for the first time.

Moscow has said it wants Ukraine to give up more territory as one of several conditions for a ceasefire.

The summit between Trump and Putin has also hit a snag as a preliminary meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, which was expected to take place in Budapest on Thursday, was postponed.

Russia on Tuesday once again fired drones at Ukraine’s energy facilities, targeting the Chernihiv region in northeastern Ukraine.

Officials said people were left without electricity and some without water. The region has come under fierce attacks in recent weeks as Russia stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Also, European leaders, including Germany, issued a joint statement supporting President Donald Trump’s position on ending the fighting between Ukraine and Russia.

Keep reading for updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.