"A lot of progress has been made": Trump announced a new meeting with Putin in Budapest
This will be preceded by a meeting of the delegations of the two countries without the participation of the presidents
US President Donald Trump announced a new meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which will be held in Budapest. The US President wrote about this in the social network Truth Social after a telephone conversation with Putin.
Details
Trump did not specify when new face-to-face talks between the two presidents might take place. A meeting of "high-level advisers" from both sides will be held next week to precede them, Trump said. The U.S. delegation will be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The location of the meeting will be determined at a later date.
"President Putin and I will then meet in Budapest, Hungary to see if we can end this 'inglorious' war between Russia and Ukraine," Trump wrote.
The phone conversation between Trump and Putin took place on the eve of the US president's meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Putin Zelensky at the White House, which is scheduled for October 17. Trump said that he planned to discuss Putin's conversation with Zelensky.
"I believe there has been a lot of progress with the phone call today," the US president said. He called the conversation "very productive."
Context
Trump has repeatedly recently expressed frustration that Russia refuses to stop fighting in Ukraine and that Putin has avoided meeting privately with Zelensky for peace talks, Bloomberg wrote. In September, the U.S. leader said for the first time that Ukraine was in a position where it could reclaim all of its territory. The statement was a "sudden change of position" and a "serious lunge" against Russia, The Wall Street Journal wrote at the time.
In recent weeks, Trump has indicated he wants to increase pressure on Putin to end the conflict, urged U.S. economic partners to stop buying Russian energy and hinted at the possibility of giving Ukraine Tomahawks, Bloomberg added.
On Wednesday, October 15, Trump said that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised him to stop buying Russian oil. The U.S. president did not give an exact timeline for when that might happen. Three of six Indian energy executives interviewed told Bloomberg that the country's oil supply from Russia could indeed decline in the short term. Brent crude prices rose about 1% against this backdrop, pushing back from their lowest level in five months.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
