The Spanish newspaper El Pais writes about the upcoming Trump-Putin meeting, calling the choice of Budapest as the venue a"slap in the face to Europe."
The European Union (EU), which sought to participate in the negotiations, not only did not get a seat at the negotiating table, but it"will now effectively have to clear the table and pay the bill," the newspaper said.
And while Brussels officially claims that a meeting between Trump and Putin could be useful if it helped end the war, unofficially, several sources for the publication have called it a"political nightmare" for the EU.
"The location was chosen deliberately - it is favorable to Russia because it deepens the cracks in the EU [policy] towards the Kremlin," a European diplomat told the newspaper.
"The Putin-Trump meeting in Budapest shows the strategic use of Hungary as the EU's weakest link in the geopolitical arena. It also shows the servile [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán, who owes more to Russia and the US than to the EU itself, while receiving a gift at a time when he is intensifying his criticism of the union in an attempt to save his political future," Harvard University researcher Alberto Alemanno told the newspaper El Pais.