"Kommersant": Putin-Trump meeting was canceled not through the Kremlin's fault

Discussions continue in the political arena regarding the cancellation of the planned meeting in Budapest between US President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. While the Western press cites the sharp hardening of the Kremlin's position on the Ukrainian issue as the reason, the Russian newspaper "Kommersant," citing an anonymous source in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, refutes this version, putting forward its own arguments.

Earlier, the prestigious British newspaper Financial Times had written that the reason for the breakdown of the negotiations was a "Ukrainian memorandum" presented by the Russian side. According to the FT, the document contained "maximalist demands," after receiving which President Trump considered a meeting with Putin pointless. This information, according to the newspaper, was reinforced by a statement from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who noted after a phone call between the heads of the foreign policy departments of Russia and the US that Moscow was not ready for negotiations.

However, the interlocutor of "Kommersant" presents a completely different chronology and interpretation of events. According to the Russian diplomat, there was no "memorandum" after the presidents' phone conversation. Instead, there was an informal document fixing the positions, which Moscow had sent to Washington even before the Trump-Putin phone call on October 16. It was after that conversation that Trump announced his intention to meet in Budapest.

The source insists that there was no new or hardened position in that document. It merely recorded the same position that Vladimir Putin had publicly voiced back in Anchorage. "Therefore, the Russian document could in no way have been the reason for the cancellation of the meeting in Budapest," the newspaper concludes, summarizing the clarifications of its diplomatic source.

Thus, Moscow officially denies the accusations of derailing the negotiation process due to its own intransigence. However, "Kommersant" does not specify what the real reason for the cancellation of the Budapest summit was.