Donald Trump has said he will not meet with Vladimir Putin until he thinks a deal to secure peace between Russia and Ukraine is in place.
“You have to know that we’re going to make a deal, I’m not going to be wasting my time,” the US president told reporters in Doha on Saturday.
It comes after Mr Trump said earlier this week he did not want to have a “wasted meeting” with Putin, after officials concluded that the gap between the two sides was too big to begin negotiations on peace in Ukraine.
An intended summit in Budapest, Hungary, between the pair was to take place in the coming weeks, but was put on hold on Wednesday. “It just it didn’t feel right to me,” said Mr Trump. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it.”
As well as calling off the meeting, the Trump administration also unleashed new sanctions against Russia’s biggest oil companies, as part of a push for Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
But Putin responded by saying he would never bow to US pressure, despite admitting the sanctions could cause economic pain.
