The meeting between Trump and Putin will take place in Hungary because"he and I love Viktor Orbán," Donald Trump said in the presence of Ukrainian President Zelensky at a press conference before their closed-door meeting.
“It has a leader we love. We love Viktor Orbán, he loves him, I love him too”
- Trump referred to Putin when asked why the summit announced on Thursday, where the US president hopes to reach an agreement on ending the war in Ukraine, will be held in Budapest.
"It's a safe country. He leads the country very well. They don't have many of the problems that other countries struggle with. That's why we decided to have Orbán, and I think he'll be a very good host," the US president continued his praise of Viktor Orbán.
Trump later addressed Hungary once again: when asked why Hungary could stay with Russian energy if he was trying to force India not to buy more Russian oil, he repeated the explanation he had previously received from Orbán and said that Hungary was in a special situation because it had no access to the sea, and therefore, according to Trump, it depended on a single oil pipeline.
Two days ago, it looked like the third Trump-Zelensky summit in Washington would be about strengthening Ukraine's position, Kiev's hoped-for Tomahawk missiles, and increasing pressure on Putin - a further improvement in relations after the brutal humiliation of Zelensky in February and the much more positive meeting in September. However, the outlook changed dramatically on Thursday, when Trump spoke with Putin on the phone for two and a half hours, and by the time Zelensky's plane landed in Washington, the Ukrainian president had already been greeted with the news that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin would meet again after Alaska, in Budapest.
Trump talks about the summit with Putin as a peace negotiation, but the leader of the attacked country is not expected to be present this time either, just as the European Union is not at the table. After the phone call with Putin, Trump spoke in a completely different way about the hot topic of the past week, the issue of the American Tomahawk missiles. While he had previously floated the idea that Ukraine could receive missiles that can be used against Russian targets at depths of up to 2,500 kilometers, he is now talking about the fact that the United States also needs the weapons - based on this, the whole Tomahawk topic seems to be just a tactical diversion and rhetorical pressure, the transfer of which was probably not even seriously considered.
The substantive talks between Zelensky and Trump are being held behind closed doors, starting after 8 p.m. Hungarian time on Friday - whether any details of the talks will be leaked will only become clear later. However, a press conference was held before the meeting, with Trump sitting between Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, facing Zelensky, who was being harassed by reporters, and the rest of the Ukrainian delegation, who have been in Washington for days.
After Trump, similar to the previous choreography, once again praised Zelensky's black suit, he said that they would discuss with the Ukrainian president, among other things, the content of Thursday's Trump-Putin phone call (almost nothing is publicly known about this yet), and they would also discuss the Tomahawks.
“But what is needed first and foremost is not Tomahawks, but the war must end”
- Trump added, and although he did not say that Ukraine could not receive the American missiles, he clearly indicated that he had no intention of handing over the weapons. It is good that the European countries will pay for the American weapons, but the Americans still gave a lot of weapons that they may need, he said,"that is one of the reasons why we want to end this war," he claimed.
Zelensky was forced into a supporting role at the press conference in Washington, focusing mostly on expressing his gratitude to Trump and his willingness to compromise, and avoiding a public conflict with the US president. He stressed that he was open to any negotiation format, but he also emphasized that Ukraine needs security guarantees, NATO would be the best, but they also need basic weapons.
“President Trump has really shown the world that he can achieve a ceasefire in the Middle East, so I hope he will do that and we will have a great success for Ukraine… I hope that President Trump will be able to make that happen”
- said Zelensky.
The American president emphasized that he believes Putin now wants to end the war (just like Zelensky):"Yesterday I had a very productive conversation with Vladimir Putin. I think he wants to end the war in a week," he said, adding that there will be no direct Putin-Zelensky meeting for now.
"These two leaders don't like each other, and we want to make it comfortable for everyone. So we'll be in it as a threesome in some way, but maybe separately," Trump said.
“Well, we’ll see what happens. You know what? I think he will. I think President Putin wants to end the war, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking like this.”
- he added.
Asked if he was worried that the Russian president would continue to stall, he said that was possible, but he boasted of his own negotiating skills to defend himself. “I’ve been played by the best all my life, and I’ve come out pretty good. I think he really wants to make a deal,” he said of Putin.
Trump once again said that in his own system of numbers this would be the ninth peace that he had brokered, and referring mainly to the conflict between India and Pakistan, he claimed that he had already saved tens of millions of lives."I'm not interested in the Nobel Prize, only in human lives," he said modestly. Referring to the Gaza settlement plan, he said that the situation in the Middle East is much more complicated, since there are more than fifty countries in the region - in comparison, he called the Russian-Ukrainian agreement easier to broker.
