President Trump on Thursday canceled a planned weekend meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing the Russian military’s recent seizure of Ukrainian ships and sailors.
Trump tweeted shortly after Air Force One departed for a 10-hour flight to Argentina, where Trump will join other world leaders at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires.
“Based on the fact that the ships and sailors have not been returned to Ukraine from Russia, I have decided it would be best for all parties concerned to cancel my previously scheduled meeting in Argentina with President Vladimir Putin. I look forward to a meaningful Summit again as soon as this situation is resolved!” Trump tweeted.
About an hour earlier, Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House that he “probably” would meet with Putin, but that he may cancel the meeting after receiving an in-air briefing on Ukraine.
“I probably will be meeting with President Putin, we haven’t terminated that meeting. I was thinking about it, but we haven’t,” Trump said on the South Lawn. “They’d like to have it. I think it’s a very good time to have the meeting. I’m getting a full report on the plane as to what happened, with respect to that, and that will determine what I’m going to be doing.”
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters aboard Air Force One that Trump decided to cancel the meeting after conferring with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and national security adviser John Bolton.
Kelly and Pompeo were on board the plane, and Bolton joined the conversation by phone, Sanders said, telling reporters she was “not aware” of a phone call between Trump and Putin to communicate the decision.
“There was some back and forth” through other channels, Sanders said.
Trump canceled the meeting shortly after his former attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a planned Trump hotel in Moscow.
Trump’s vacillations on a potential Putin meeting follow a similar series of on-again, off-again developments ahead of Trump’s Armistice Day trip to France earlier this month. Putin and Trump agreed to meet in Paris for the first time since a politically explosive July summit in Helsinki, but the plans fell apart, in an apparent nod to the sensibilities of French President Emmanuel Macron, though observers were kept guessing until events unfolded.
