There are two main reasons for the jubilation - US President Donald Trump's refusal to transfer long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine and the choice of venue for the meeting between Trump and Russian dictator Putin - Budapest.

It should be recalled that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is not only a Trump supporter, but also a staunch pro-Russian, having tried to block several European Union (EU) initiatives related to imposing sanctions on Russia. Orbán has also abandoned the EU's common approach to no longer purchasing natural gas from Russia. Therefore, as The Telegraph writes, Trump's offer to meet Putin in Budapest is"a slap in the face to the entire EU."

It is also worth mentioning Monday's news in the Western media, which Russian propagandists have not yet had time to reflect on. Namely, as reported, for example, by the news agency"Reuters" and the newspaper "The Guardian", Trump has suggested that the best way to end the war in Ukraine would be to"carve up" the Donbas region of this country so that most of it remains under Russian control. When asked by a"Reuters" journalist whether Ukraine should return all of Donbas to Russia, Trump answered in the negative."Let it be divided the way it is. It is divided right now. I think 78% of the land has already been occupied by Russia," the US president explained.

The Kremlin has insisted that Ukraine must return all of Donbas, including those territories not controlled by Russia. Ukraine has so far categorically rejected the return of Donbas.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has already reacted to this news, writing on the social network"X" that "none of us should put pressure on Zelensky when it comes to territorial concessions. We should all put pressure on Russia to stop the aggression. Reconciliation efforts have never been the path to a just and lasting peace."

Meanwhile, Swedish economist and former Atlantic Council senior fellow Anders Aslund says clearly:"Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and Ukraine must exclude Trump from any further talks on Ukraine because Trump represents Putin, not the West."

"Tomahawk" and Budapest

The Russians announced on Friday, October 17, even before Trump's meeting with Zelensky, that after a phone call between the US President and Putin, it was clear that no Tomahawk transfer to Ukraine would take place.

Both the Kremlin dictator and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have emphasized throughout the past week that the Tomahawk will have no impact on the course of the Ukrainian war, but the damage to Russian-US relations will be enormous, and Moscow's response will be very convincing and painful for Washington.

Lavrov, putting pressure, pointed out that in the event of the transfer of the"Tomahawk", Washington would have directly entered the war. Because only the Americans know how to launch and aim cruise missiles. At the same time, the minister claimed that the spirit of Anchorage [the city in Alaska, where Trump and Putin first met] has not exhausted itself, but Trump is under the influence of warmongers who want to"lead him astray."

Unfortunately, Trump's refusal to let Zelensky go and the subsequent pressure to abandon Donbass can be seen as a brilliant success of Kremlin diplomacy.

At the same time, the Russians ridiculed Zelensky's visit to the United States, stating that he went there"with wings of hope, but returned completely defeated." Propaganda artists ironically said that Trump gave Zelensky very little time because he wanted to go to his summer house to play golf on the evening of October 17, and that loading a golf bag was much more important to Trump than Zelensky.

The Russians are also very happy about the choice of Budapest for the Trump-Putin meeting, because, knowing Orbán's position, it is a humiliation for Europe. As"60 Minutes" host Yevgeny Popov stated, it is remarkable that European"warmongers" will not "be drawn" to Budapest, because it is difficult to imagine Ursula von der Leyen going to Orbán.

Propagandists allowed for the possibility that Trump would"drag Zelensky to Budapest as well," but that could only be so that the Ukrainian would sign a capitulation.

Balāžs Jarabiks, an analyst at the think tank"R.Politik", which focuses on Russian politics, points out that Budapest is very beneficial for Trump, Putin and Orbān. Trump supports his closest European ally, Orbān is hosting a long-awaited peace summit, and Putin is symbolically returning to the EU after 3.5 years of war.

For Kiev and Brussels, however, the picture is bleaker, according to Jarabik. Ukraine knows that the Tomahawk will not arrive, and the EU has run out of money. Frozen Russian assets are now the only chance to keep Ukraine afloat. US military aid remains indispensable for the coming years.

"Zelensky is under enormous pressure. Russia has military advantages; Ukraine faces a growing budget deficit, declining popularity ratings (Zaluzhny and Budanov are leading in the polls), growing internal insecurity. Budapest 2.0 will not be well received at home," says Jarabik.

The latter is attributable to the mood of Ukrainian society, which would hardly accept it if Zelensky agreed to return the occupied territories of Donbas to the Russians.

According to Jarabik, the real question is whether Budapest will become another Alaska? That is, a tacit understanding between the US and Russia and a pre-election stage for Orbán, or whether it will actually bring the end of the war closer. In any case, the path leads closer to the end of the war, just not according to EU rules.

British, North Korea and Odessa

Last week, propagandists cited a statement by the head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov, in which the FSB accused Britain of helping Ukraine coordinate a large-scale drone attack on Russian military airfields this summer.

Bortnikov claimed that"direct British intelligence surveillance" helped Kiev carry out Operation Spider Web, a coordinated drone attack in June that targeted five Russian air bases thousands of kilometers apart. He claimed that the operation, which came before Russian-Ukrainian peace talks in Istanbul, was led by Britain. The FSB chief also blamed Britain's Special Air Service and MI6 intelligence agency for planning last month's deadly Ukrainian drone strike on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium and a Russian-Kazakhstan oil project. He warned that British and Ukrainian intelligence agencies were also planning an attack on TurkStream, the only route that delivers Russian gas to European markets.

"It is the British, using provocations and disinformation, who are organizing the Brussels strategy to disrupt the settlement in Ukraine," Bortnikov emphasized.

This FSB statement was eagerly played up by Stalinist Nikolai Starikov, indulging in pseudo-historical excursions, claiming that the British had a visible presence in all of Russia's wars, because they had always hated and wanted to destroy Russia. To further bolster his claims, Starikov referred to the fact that Britain and the British had always been popular with Hitler, omitting the fact that the British were one of the fiercest opponents of Nazi Germany and an extremely important ally of the USSR during World War II.

North Korea was praised by Russian State Duma deputy Marina Kim, who described how the entire nation in North Korea is perfectly united for the defense of the country. Kim emphasized that when the new, untested intercontinental ballistic missile"Hwasong-20" was displayed at Kim Il-sung Square, a crowd of one million people cheered it.

The propagandists, of course, also mentioned the"events in Odessa". Namely, it is about Zelensky's decision to strip Odessa Mayor Hennady Trukhanov of Ukrainian citizenship, because he allegedly has a Russian passport and may now be threatened with deportation from the country. A public rally was held in Odessa, where people expressed joy at the revocation of Trukhanov's citizenship.

Kremlin ideologues swore in anger at what had happened and declared that"Western Ukraine has always been a parasite at the expense of the Southeast." "Sooner or later, we will enter Odessa. At the moment it is a concentration camp. The battle for Odessa will be terrible, but the result will be in our favor," the propagandists shouted. Vladimir Solovyov declared that Odessa should be surrounded for as long as it surrenders. As long as Odessa is under Ukrainian control, Crimea will be under threat, the propagandists said.

To be fair, the situation with Trukhanov is unclear and ambiguous. Ukrainian investigative journalist Yuriy Nikolov, who was the first in Ukraine to shed light on the huge price increase in food purchases for the Ukrainian army, believes that the Russian passport incriminated against Trukhanov is not real, but that the"central mafia" is currently fighting against the local administration.

He believes that this fight will sooner or later end in disgrace for the Ukrainian officials who have fallen for this provocation. It is worth noting that investigative journalist Hristo Grozev, who has been declared wanted by Russia, also reported that the evidence of Trukhanov's Russian passport published by the Security Service of Ukraine is"obviously fake."

Latvian "genocide" against Russians

Last week, for several days in a row, both on Russian television news channels and in propagandist programs, there were stories about"fascist" Latvia expelling more than 800 Russian citizens, most of whom are pensioners, from the country.

The Russians plaintively stated that all these people had lived in Latvia almost their entire lives and were now being deported at the end of their lives because they had failed language and loyalty tests. It should be noted that the Russians, of course, did not emphasize the failed language tests, but loyalty tests. They falsely claimed that a person could be deported from the country only for answering negatively when asked whether he supported the dismantling of Soviet monuments.

Of course, propagandists went to extremes, claiming that the Russian language is banned in Latvia. The odious Andrei Mamikins claimed that with such a step Latvia is showing its"Nazi" nature, that the only purpose of deporting"sick pensioners" is to mock people and demonstrate its power.