MOSCOW, October 31. /TASS/. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on a Financial Times report claiming that the United States had allegedly canceled a Budapest summit between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump after Moscow sent a memorandum on Ukraine.

The newspaper also alleged that the conversation between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio regarding the summit’s preparations was "tense."

"I would not like to comment on this newspaper report, I just suggest that everyone recall the wording used in the statements of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the US State Department following the conversation between Lavrov and Rubio," he said in response to a request for comment. "There were completely different wordings and assessments."

On the situation with the meeting

On October 16, Trump, after a telephone conversation with Putin, said that they had agreed to meet soon in Budapest. Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov said that Moscow and Washington would start preparing a new summit without delay.

On October 23, Trump said the meeting with Putin was postponed indefinitely. According to the US president, it seemed to him that the next round of talks would not be able to achieve "what is needed."

Putin emphasized that the Russian-American summit in Budapest was postponed, not canceled. He also said that the initiative for the negotiations with Russia in Budapest came from the United States.

Lavrov noted that the prospects of the Russia-US summit would depend on the US, which had earlier proposed the meeting. Hungary expressed hope that Putin and Trump would eventually meet in Budapest.

Lavrov and Rubio held a telephone conversation on October 20. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, "possible concrete steps were discussed in the interests of implementing the understandings" that were reached in the telephone conversation between the presidents.

Lavrov drew attention to the message from the State Department, which said that the conversation with Rubio was productive and that, at the moment, there was no need for a meeting between the US Secretary of State and the Russian Foreign Minister. From this Lavrov concluded that "the conversation went well indeed."