The phone call that changed everything: "When I call Putin…"

But just five days later, the summit was canceled, and new sanctions against Moscow were imposed—the first of Trump’s second administration, CNN reports in its analysis.

The turnaround came after U.S. officials, including the president himself, gradually realized that Putin’s stance on ending the war in Ukraine had not significantly changed since their last meeting.

Continued attacks on civilians, maximalist demands on Kyiv, and refusal to agree to an urgent ceasefire were a clear signal to Trump that nothing had moved forward.

• NATO scrambled aircraft; Russians crossed the border
• The world’s greatest fear coming true? Russians to receive deadly missiles with nuclear warheads

“It just didn’t feel right to me,” Trump said on Wednesday. “I didn’t feel that we would get to the place we needed to be. So I canceled it,” he explained, referring to his decision not to go to Budapest for a meeting with Putin.

After months of threats that never materialized, Trump has now taken the most concrete step yet in punishing Russia for the war. “I just felt the time was right,” Trump said at the White House shortly after the sanctions were announced. “We’ve waited long enough.”

It remains an open question whether Trump’s new, tougher stance is permanent or merely temporary.

Since returning to office, he has repeatedly shifted his approach to Putin, often influenced by their phone calls.

According to a senior White House official, there was no single decisive moment that changed the president’s mind; rather, his position evolved through repeated disappointments as it became clear that Putin was not moving toward ending the war.

“Every time I talk to Vladimir, we have good conversations, and then they go nowhere,” Trump complained. “They just go nowhere.”

• Putin “calls up” 2 million reservists!

The day after his call with Putin, Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Although the meeting was tense and Trump pressured Zelensky on territorial concessions, he ultimately devised a plan calling for a ceasefire along the current front lines—far from what Putin had demanded.

Following a Monday phone call between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, it became clear that Moscow’s position had not changed.

Trump concluded that a Budapest summit would be a “waste of time,” and planning was halted.