WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Tuesday his plan for a swift meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin was on hold because he doesn't want it to be a “waste of time.” It was the latest twist in Trump's stop-and-go effort to resolve the war in Ukraine.

The decision to hold off on the meeting in Budapest, Hungary, which Trump had announced last week, was made following a call Monday between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting,” Trump said. “I don’t want to have a waste of time — so we’ll see what happens.”

Trump's hesitancy will likely come as a relief to European leaders, who have accused Putin of stalling for time with diplomacy while trying to gain ground on the battlefield . The leaders — inclu

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