The phone call between the US and Russian foreign ministers on Monday evening, which was intended to prepare for the US-Russian summit planned for Budapest, failed to produce any results. According to CNN, the talks have been suspended for a while. An unnamed White House official told the newspaper that, contrary to plans, the two foreign ministers will not meet for the time being, which would be a pre-summit for the Budapest summit. The main reason for the failure is that US Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have different views on the conditions for a possible end to the war.
It is not yet clear how this will affect the planned Trump-Putin meeting, but administration sources say Rubio is unlikely to support the two presidents meeting next week. The reason, according to the US secretary of state, is that Moscow is still unwilling to give in to its tough demands on Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Russian Interfax reported that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov considers the Rubio-Lavrov meeting premature. “We are currently working to process what the two foreign ministers discussed, but a meeting was not specifically discussed either before the phone conversation or during the past day. As an idea, it exists, but it is too early to talk about the schedule,” Ryabkov emphasized, emphasizing that such an event must be properly prepared.
The previous meeting did not produce any substantive results.
It has been more than two months since Trump last met Putin in person in Anchorage, Alaska. The nearly three-hour summit ended without an agreement, although both leaders spoke of progress. The US president announced on October 16 – after a phone call with his Russian counterpart – that they would meet again in Budapest in the near future to end the war. The news was confirmed by Viktor Orbán, who said it was “another great chance for peace”. Meanwhile, the Kremlin also announced that representatives of Russia and the United States would immediately begin preparations for the summit.
The Hungarian Prime Minister later said that the Hungarian capital was mentioned as a possible location for the meeting because"we were left alone in Europe on the path to peace."
The possible Trump-Putin meeting raised a number of questions, Budapest could be the scene of a historic event. Index asked experts about the symbolic and political significance, feasibility and possible risks of the decision. Foreign policy and security expert Anton Bendarzhevskij and military expert József Kis-Benedek also spoke, which you can read more about here.
