After an unusually calm and pleasant meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, NATO and European leaders, US President Donald Trump announced that arrangements were under way for a meeting between the leaders of Russia and Ukraine which, if successful, could represent a substantial step towards ending the conflict between the two countries. The Putin–Zelenskyy summit is to be followed by a trilateral meeting involving Trump.
According to a senior Trump official, the summit could take place in Budapest, The Guardian reported. Similar speculation had already surfaced in early August, ahead of the Trump–Putin summit in Alaska, when the venue was still uncertain. As reported by babel.ua, several European capitals were floated as potential hosts of the historic summit. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, during a video call of the Coalition of the Willing, suggested Rome as the venue, while French President Emmanuel Macron pushed for Geneva, Switzerland. According to the outlet, Trump and Zelenskyy favour the Vatican, whereas other European leaders have considered Helsinki or Budapest.
Kremlin aide Yuriy Ushakov said on Monday that Trump briefed Putin on his meeting with Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House, and that the two leaders ‘spoke in favour of continuing direct negotiations between the delegations of the Russian Federation and Ukraine’ and discussed the idea of ‘raising the level of direct Russian–Ukrainian negotiations’.
‘In a conversation with Trump, Putin noted the importance of the efforts undertaken by the US president to resolve the Ukrainian situation,’ Ushakov said, adding that the Russian leader thanked Trump for ‘his hospitality and the good organization of the meeting in Alaska, as well as the progress achieved during it’.
The last direct talks between Russia and Ukraine took place in Türkiye in June. Putin declined Zelenskyy’s public invitation to meet him face-to-face there, instead sending a low-level delegation. According to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the Putin–Zelenskyy summit could take place within two weeks.
On Monday, Trump briefed Zelenskyy and European leaders on his meeting with Putin, which took place last Friday in Alaska. After several rounds of discussion, the US president declared that a peace agreement ‘can be done’ in the near future.
Hungary has been advocating for peace negotiations and a ceasefire since the war broke out in February 2022. As its position diverges significantly from the European mainstream, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has come under constant fire, frequently labelled as ‘Putin’s puppet’ and even threatened with the withdrawal of Hungary’s voting rights in the European Union. Orbán undertook two peace missions in 2024, during the country’s six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union. Hungary is among the few EU member states that have not severed diplomatic communication channels with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, and it continues to import a significant share of its energy supplies from Moscow.
Hungarian–Ukrainian relations have deteriorated recently for several reasons—principally due to Kyiv’s restrictions on the rights of the Transcarpathian Hungarian community, and more recently because Budapest is blocking Ukraine’s EU membership bid. Orbán argues that such a move would integrate the conflict with Russia directly into the EU and would carry serious negative economic and security consequences.
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