WASHINGTON
US President Donald Trump will meet NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Wednesday, a White House official confirmed Tuesday.
The official, who confirmed the sit-down on condition of anonymity, did not disclose additional details about the talks. NATO also confirmed the meeting, and said the leaders are not expected to address the media.
Earlier Monday, another White House official said plans for a second summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are now on hold after what the official described as a “productive” call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
On Oct. 16, following a phone call with Putin, Trump announced plans to meet the Russian president in Budapest, Hungary within two weeks, and said Lavrov and Rubio would meet this week to iron out the details for the meeting. That sit-down was also nixed, according to the official.
The reasoning for the abrupt revisions was not immediately clear, but Russia has since balked at Trump’s insistence on a ceasefire in Ukraine that would keep in place existing frontlines in the Kremlin’s over three-and-a-half-year war.
Lavrov told reporters Tuesday that the insistence on an immediate ceasefire is contradictory to prior commitments made by the Russian and American leaders during an August summit in Alaska.
The Russian foreign minister suggested that European officials urged their American counterparts to change their stance, seeking a temporary cessation rather than a lasting resolution.
In a joint statement on Tuesday, nine European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations, and that international borders must not be changed by force.
