Connectivity has borne fruit for Viktor Orbán. A few days after the Middle East peace ceremony held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Donald Trump announced that he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.
The American president may have gotten a taste of international agreements. According to him, the Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire is a peace that no one else has managed to achieve in three thousand years (according to him, the conflict began a thousand years before the birth of Christ and a good 1,500 years before the birth of Muhammad). The shine of his success was enhanced by the presence of heads of state or government from two dozen countries at the ceremonial signing in Egypt. Among them was Orbán, whom Trump called a fantastic guy, although, as the president added, he knows that many people disagree with this qualification.
But Putin does. If we are to believe the news leaking from the White House, the Russian president, in his difficult situation, has already made the second attempt to personally discuss the possibility of making peace with Trump, and as in August, he has now suggested Budapest as the venue.
The American president initially opted for Alaska, but now he has agreed to the meeting on the Danube.
According to a weekend report by the Financial Times, the first presidential summit on August 15th took a more significant turn than it seemed at the time. Trump was irritated by Putin's endless history lesson, from which the host extracted the intransigence of his Russian guest, even though the American side would have been open to forcing painful concessions on the Ukrainians at that time. According to some analysts, the Russian president saw the unique opportunity before him and let the moment slip away.
Zelensky is to some extent following the opposite path of Trump, as his archenemy. On February 28th, the Ukrainian president was thrown out of the White House after being reprimanded in the Oval Office for his lack of gratitude and disrespectful attire. Since then, they have met five times in person, and over time, the Ukrainian head of state's respect for Trump has grown. A few weeks ago, the American president argued that the Russian economy was actually just a paper tiger, and that the Ukrainians could eventually retake all of their occupied territory, and even march further.
Zelensky chose a simple tactic. He repeated that just as Trump's wisdom led to the quasi-capitulation of Hamas and the release of Israeli hostages through maximum military pressure, the threat of American Tomahawk missiles flying deep into Russia could force Putin into meaningful negotiations. So Trump can repeat the Middle East peace that Zelensky praised twice in every sentence in Ukraine if he allows arms sales (since Joe Biden's resignation, military purchases have been financed in some way by Europe).
Last Friday would have been the day of the decision to deploy the Tomahawks, when the Ukrainian president was once again in Washington. A day earlier, Putin had called, temporarily steering Trump back to a pro-Russian stance. This was the background to the cheers with which Orbán greeted the news of the Budapest meeting.
