Trump today canceled, via a tweet, his planned G20 meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
He said he was cancelling their private, one-on-one, nobody else in the room visit because of Russian naval aggression against Ukraine.
BREAKING: Trump cancels meeting with Putin, citing Russia's seizure of Ukrainian vessels.
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 29, 2018
Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she wasn't aware of any Trump-Putin phone call recently, but the two governments have been in communication.
Trump's meetings with South Korea’s Moon Jae-In and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be pull-asides at the G20 summit, she said.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) November 29, 2018
The Kremlin says they have not been notified of a cancellation of the Putin-Trump meeting.
Emily Tamkin, BuzzFeed News:
Trump's tweet came the same day that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for NATO to send ships to the Sea of Azov, where the Ukrainian vessels were captured.
It was also sent just hours after Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about pursuing the construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow in 2016. The details of the Trump Tower Moscow deal were first revealed by BuzzFeed News in May.
The tweeted cancellation comes just two days after the State Department announced that Trump and Putin would meet at the G20. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to whether Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was expected to join the president in his meetings, would still meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
Trump is still expected to meet with the leaders of Argentina, Japan (in a meeting that is then expected to emerge into a trilateral with India), Germany, South Korea, and Turkey
