There has been no shortage of speculation in the Western media as to what really led to U.S. President Donald Trump’s cancelling the meeting between himself and Russian President Vladimir Putin, that had been tentatively scheduled for late October in Budapest. The London Financial Times, for example, tried to hawk an unsubstantiated report about a supposed Russian memo outlining their terms for a Ukraine settlement, which purportedly caused offense in Washington.
Probably closer to the truth was a Bloomberg report which indicated that the “trigger” for the decision was the meeting between Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, at which Lavrov was adamant in asserting the Russian position. Rubio then went back to President Trump, saying that the Russians were not prepared to compromise. A last-minute telephone conversation between Rubio and Lavrov was also characterized as “heated,” after which Rubio told Trump that the Russians “were showing no willingness to negotiate.” At that point, the White House supposedly announced the cancellation.
