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There are "no preparations" for American leader President Trump to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin "in the immediate future", a White House official has declared.

This past week the US president indicated he and the Russian president would conduct negotiations in Hungary's capital in the coming fortnight to address the ongoing hostilities.

A initial discussion between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Lavrov was due to be held this week - but the administration said the two had had a "positive" discussion and that a meeting was not "required".

The White House declined to provide any more details on the reason the negotiations had been delayed.

Background Context

The US president had raised the possibility of a Budapest summit over the phone with Putin, a just prior to meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House.

Various sources claimed his meeting with Zelensky had been a "shouting match", with those familiar claiming Trump had urged him to give up large areas of eastern Ukraine as part of a agreement with Russia.

Nevertheless, on this week the American president embraced a truce plan endorsed by Ukraine and EU officials to halt the hostilities on the current front line.

"Freeze the lines the way it is," he remarked.

Moscow has repeatedly pushed back against freezing the current line of contact.

Moscow was solely focused on "enduring stability", Russia's foreign minister commented on this week, indicating that freezing the front line would merely represent a short-term truce.

Negotiating Stances

The "root causes" of the war demanded attention, Lavrov said, using Moscow's terminology for a series of maximalist demands that encompass the acknowledgment of total Russian authority over the Donbas as well as the disarmament of the country – a non-starter for Kyiv and its European partners.

The Ukrainian president stated conversations concerning the front line were the "start of negotiations" but that Moscow was "doing everything" to avoid diplomacy.

He additionally stated the exclusive issue that could make Moscow "become engaged" was that of the supply of distance-capable munitions to the Ukrainian military.

Strategic Factors

The Russian president's unplanned conversation with Trump last Thursday came ahead of reports that the United States was considering delivering long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine that could possibly hit Russian territory.

The Ukrainian leader asserted it was the Tomahawks issue that had pressured the Kremlin to enter into dialogue. The talk about the missiles had turned out to be a "significant input" in negotiations", he commented.