“I had a good and productive phone call with Vladimir Putin,” US President Donald Trump wrote on his social media page. “Senior advisors” from the two countries will meet next week. He added: “President Putin and I will then meet at a previously agreed upon location in Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can end this shameful war between Russia and Ukraine.”
The high-level meeting will be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the American side, but the location has not yet been announced. There was no indication of the date of the Budapest meeting. Trump also wrote that he will receive Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Friday, where he will discuss the details of his call with Putin and other issues.
Trump said the phone call was a big step forward. In his post, he mentioned that Putin congratulated him and America on achieving peace in the Middle East, which the Russian president said was a century-old dream. Trump believes that the peace agreement will facilitate negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Trump wrote that he and Putin had a lot of talk about how Russia and the United States would trade after the war. According to the White House, they spoke on the phone for more than two hours. According to Putin's special envoy, the meeting was positive and productive, writes the BBC.
Viktor Orbán has already reacted to the news of the Budapest meeting: one wrote,"another great opportunity for peace, and it's only Thursday." On X, he posted that this is great news and"we are ready."
Trump and Putin last met on August 15 in Alaska, where they failed to achieve a substantive breakthrough, and they also communicated differently about what they agreed to.
Trump has recently spoken of his disappointment with Putin and is considering giving Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. International media reported before the Trump-Putin phone call that this issue would be at the top of Friday's Trump-Zelensky meeting.
Trump has already decided that America will share more serious intelligence information in order to enable the Ukrainians to target distant Russian energy infrastructure.
