(MENAFN- Asia Times) Something happened that caused Donald Trump to“cancel” the expected meeting between himself and Vladimir Putin in Budapest.

Consider this: Plans were moving ahead for the meeting. Hungary's Foreign Minister arrived in Washington to work on planning for the meeting. While he was still here, Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a“productive” phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – and then recommended that Trump cancel the Putin meeting.

The primary issue is over the US demand for a ceasefire in place. The Russians, said Lavrov, would never agree to any such thing, so Rubio told the President a meeting in Budapest would not be successful.

The Rubio-Lavrov exchange was on Monday, October 20. It came after Zelensky met with President Trump on October 17th, a meeting that was fraught with conflict.

While there is no definitive readout on the Zelensky meeting, most of the leaks to the press focused on two things: the President told Zelensky he was not releasing Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine and he also told Zelensky that Ukraine had to accept territorial concessions for any peace deal to happen.

Zelensky had come to the White House equipped with maps showing targets inside Russia for the American-supplied Tomahawks. He fully expected Washington to agree to the plan to hit Russia's infrastructure, military-industrial complex and, quite probably its main decision-making organs, including the Kremlin. Zelensky was looking for US approval of the targets.

One recalls that on May 3rd, 2023 Ukraine launched an audacious drone attack on the Kremlin, specifically targeting Putin's office. Because drones fly slowly and carry limited amounts of explosives, the attack was not successful.

Tomahawks, on the other hand, fly much faster than drones because they are jet powered. They fly close to the ground and can maneuver around air defenses and other obstacles, and have a unitary high explosive 1,000-pound warhead capable of destroying hardened targets, with blast effects and fragmentation that can kill in a large swath, making the Kremlin target likely a high Ukrainian priority.

In short, the Tomahawks for Ukraine were intended to give Ukraine a decapitation capability intended to drive Moscow out of the war.

Many commentators, including Russian mil-bloggers, have tried to say that the Tomahawk was not a wonder weapon (Wunderwaffe), but that is to misunderstand the intention behind providing them against Russian air defenses (including radars) that might, or might not, be able to stop them.

It is likewise the case that the offer to send Tomahawks was fraught with potentially disastrous consequences, assuming Putin survived such an attack. Russia has a deep tactical nuclear capability, and a Tomahawk decapitation attack could very well lead to an unprecedented nuclear escalation. Whether President Trump has been adequately warned about this is unclear.

The President has also made clear that Tomahawks provided to Ukraine, if they were, would be operated by the Ukrainians and not by the United States, leaving escalation in Ukrainian hands, at least allegedly.

However, judging from Russia's outlook, it does not matter. The truth is that to render Tomahawks effective, careful intelligence gathering and mapping, far beyond Ukraine's capabilities, is needed. Such mapping would seek to mask the approach of a Tomahawk to its designated target, and would identify air defense threats, especially radars.

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Most likely, to really work, beyond the mapping and imaging that would be needed, jamming and other tasks would need to be carried out to thwart Russian countermeasures. Special US aircraft capable of jamming enemy electronics, with suitable range, would have to support Tomahawk operations.

One of them is the EA-37B Compass Call. Compass Call's mission is to disrupt enemy command and control communications, radars, and navigation systems, significantly hindering adversary coordination as part of the Counter-Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Targeting mission.

Why did the US back out?

The US backed out of the Tomahawk deal, at least for now, fearing escalation, and subsequently imposed heavy sanctions on Russia's main oil companies. Those sanctions are under US Treasury Department foreign asset controls.

Here is the official Treasury Department statement (in part):

Maria Zakharova

Russia's response to the Treasury Department sanctions came fast and furious with some Russian leaders saying that Russia was now at war with the United State. That initial reaction did not last very long, however, and Russia tried to tone down its comments.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova at a press briefing said,“The new sanctions imposed by the US Treasury Department against Rosneft and Lukoil will not cause problems for Russia, which has developed a strong immunity to such restrictions. However, they send a counterproductive signal, including from the point of view of the Ukrainian settlement.”

We don't know for sure what happened between the allegedly“good” call between Putin and Trump and the Lavrov-Rubio call on October 20.

There are different possible explanations.

The first is confusion over what Trump thought he heard Putin telling him and what Putin may actually have said. There is no available transcript of the two-hour phone call between the leaders.

There was a subsequent comment from Trump saying that he regarded a ceasefire along with a territorial deal as how any agreement with Russia might be reached. One can presume that this was the thrust of the conversation that took place between Trump and Putin.

Not long after the call, Kremlin spokespersons, followed by public comments by Lavrov, made clear that Russia would not accept a ceasefire without resolving the other issues with Ukraine (territorial, military and political). Why did the Kremlin go out of this way to stress its understanding on a ceasefire?

It is reasonable to suppose that the Kremlin already knew that the conversation between Trump and Putin was somehow misinterpreted by Washington and that Washington expected a ceasefire and then negotiations on the disposition of the Ukraine war.

The misinterpretation theme seems convincing but there are other possibilities. One of them is that Putin indeed agreed with Trump initially, but got heavy pushback from the Russian security establishment, including the Russian army, who probably would have told him they would suffer a severe setback if they agreed to call a halt to operations.

Similarly, Trump got pushback from Europe, some of it reflected in major articles in European media, especially the well-regarded Financial Times. Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General, also arranged to come urgently to Washington. Thus, it can well be that instead of a misunderstanding there was too much understanding.

It is noteworthy that“someone” launched attacks on Hungarian and Romanian oil refineries. On the night of October 20-21, 2025, an explosion occurred at the MOL refinery in Százhalombatta, Hungary. A few hours earlier, on October 20, another explosion occurred at the Lukoil refinery in Ploieşti, Romania.

These refineries process oil from the Druzhba pipeline. Previously, Ukraine had hit the Druzhba pipeline in Russia multiple times using drones, reportedly causing significant fire damage to a pumping station in the Bryansk region. Meanwhile Ukrainian drones drones hit Rosneft's largest refinery in Ryazan – the third strike on the key facility in less than three months.

The attack on Hungary is politically significant, because Hungary was supposed to be the site of the Budapest summit. Just before the attacks, Poland said that if Putin's plane heading to Budapest crossed Polish airspace, it would be forcibly landed and Putin would be arrested.

Looking ahead

The Russian army is making modest progress in Ukraine, but not nearly enough to force the Ukrainians to make concessions (if, indeed, they can be forced even under dire conditions). Russia continues to attack Ukraine's energy infrastructure and some deep military targets, having some impact but far from enough to force Ukraine's leaders into any compromise with Russia.

It is probably this deep frustration in Russia's political echelon that initially led Putin to call Trump and put an initial offer on the table. That offer was a ceasefire with territorial concessions up front as part of the deal, and that was reported by the Financial Times. Trump read it differently, thinking the ceasefire would come first.

The war can drag on, but the Russians have to make up their minds on whether they can actually win the war, or lower the profile and just hang onto what they have gotten so far. The problem with hanging on is that it leads to more casualties and economic costs Russia cannot sustain for too long.

Worse still, hanging on means that Russia's international troubles will multiply and its commercial sector will continue to perform badly. The US is making inroads in shifting opinion in India, after a bad start, and China seems to be wobbling as it could be facing leadership challenges. In any case, China's willingness to backstop Russia is open to serious questions.

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A big-picture notion is that Russia is trying to support a very long front with a relatively small army (maximum 700,000 troops) that can't mass for an attack on Ukraine's political and military nerve centers. There is nothing to indicate any change in this operational equation. There is no stepped up recruitment in Russia and Russia's leaders don't want a mass mobilization because it will be interpreted as a preparation for a wider war in Europe and will be extremely unpopular, an admission by Putin that the Ukraine venture has turned sour.

The US has far less to lose, and can continue arms supplies to Ukraine using European resources. Washington has to be careful to avoid steps that go too far and needs to keep the door open to further talks with Russia, as Secretary of State Rubio already noted

There are many wild cards. One of them is what steps, if any, Russia will take next that prompt policy change in Washington. Other wild cards would be actions promoted by Europe that lead to a wider conflict.

The US has to be fearful that the Europeans, some with sinking economies and unpopular leaders, may take action against Russia or its allies (especially Belarus ), or push Moldova into a war against Transdenistra, all of which will escalate the ongoing conflict. It is an open question whether Washington is aware of some of these actions, or maybe even supports some of them, such as the NATO arms build up in Moldova.

For now, a meeting at the forum is unlikely and negotiations won't happen until there are significant policy changes by the parties involved in the conflict.

Asia Times senior correspondent Stephen Bryen is a former US deputy undersecretary of defense. This article was originally published on his Substack newsletter Weapons and Power. It is republished with permission.

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