US President Donald Trump announced Thursday after a “long and productive” phone call with his counterpart, Vladimir Putin, that the two have agreed to meet at “an agreed-upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see” if they can “end the ignominious war between Russia and Ukraine.”
Trump spoke with Putin the day before Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to the White House this Friday. Trump confirmed this on his social media platform, Truth. On the same forum, he gave details about the outcome of that conversation.
He said Putin had congratulated him “and the United States on the great achievement of peace in the Middle East.” “I firmly believe this success will contribute to our negotiations to end the war with Russia and Ukraine,” Trump wrote. “We also spent considerable time discussing trade between Russia and the United States after the war with Ukraine is over. At the end of the call, we agreed to a meeting of our senior advisors next week. The initial U.S. meetings will be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with others to be named shortly. The location of the meeting is to be determined,” he clarified. “I believe today’s telephone conversation represented a major step forward.”
The meeting in Washington with Zelensky—at which, Trump announced, Thursday's conversation with Putin"and many other topics" will be discussed—is for a "working lunch" during which the two leaders are expected to discuss the possibility of a new shipment of weapons for Kyiv's defense. Trump and Zelensky spoke by phone twice last weekend. Throughout this week, a Ukrainian delegation led by Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko and Presidential Chief Andriy Yermak held preparatory meetings at various levels in the U.S. capital, including with Rubio.
“The leadership of the United States and, personally, of President Donald Trump have made peace in the Middle East possible. This is the vision the world, and Ukraine in particular, needs today,” Yermak said on social media.
Trump said last Sunday during his trip to the Middle East to attend the signing of the first phase of the peace plan between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, that he had told Zelensky that he was ready for a new ultimatum to Putin: either Russia commits to serious peace talks or Ukraine will receive powerful Tomahawk missiles from the United States. “[Ukraine] would like to have them. To be honest, I might have to talk to Russia about the Tomahawks. Do they want [those types of] missiles headed toward their country? I don’t think so,” he told reporters accompanying him aboard Air Force One.
The idea that Trump is ready to move on with Ukraine, following last week's still-uncertain diplomatic achievement in the Middle East, Gaza, is gaining traction in Washington these days. The US president won the election with, among other promises, a promise to end the Russian invasion on his first day in the Oval Office. It's been 269 days, and the war is far from abating as it heads into its fourth winter.
Trump has issued several ultimatums to Putin over the past nine months, announcing more sanctions that never materialized. The two leaders met in Alaska on August 15, in a meeting from which the Russian president emerged strengthened.
At that summit in Anchorage, the US president not only freed his counterpart from the international isolation he had found himself in and forgot about threatening to impose new taxes on Russia to force a change of heart from the Kremlin; he also accepted Putin's main demands and began talking about ending the war. In total, Russia has occupied nearly 20% of the neighboring country.
The Republican then tried a new strategy, also with limited results: putting pressure on Moscow through third countries, primarily China and India, which still buy Russian oil. The US president also maneuvered to get NATO to stop buying crude oil from that country.
Last Friday, in another demonstration of Washington's unpredictable swings on this issue, First Lady Melania Trump asserted that she maintains an"open channel of communication" with Putin from Alaska. The goal: to repatriate the Ukrainian children forcibly transferred to Russia. Some, the first lady said, have already been returned."In fact, eight children have been reunited with their families over the past 24 hours," she added. This Thursday, Trump wrote in Truth that this gesture from his wife had also been part of the conversation with Putin.
Intense week
The announcement of the call between Trump and Putin comes during an intense week of White House foreign policy, in which the US president has continued to pressure Nicolás Maduro's regime with the fifth extrajudicial operation against an alleged drug boat in international waters in the Caribbean. In that operation, the US military killed the six crew members without trial and without providing evidence of their identity or the cargo they were carrying. This was followed by confirmation that the Republican has authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.
Trump has also threatened Spain with tariffs for not increasing defense spending to 5% of GDP, as the US leader has requested of NATO partners. He did so during a visit by Argentine President Javier Milei, during which the United States sealed its commitment to provide Buenos Aires with a lifeline by granting a $20 billion currency swap to bolster the South American country's economy. In an attempt to interfere in another country's domestic politics, the Republican made this aid conditional on Argentines voting for Milei in the October 26 elections.
