Contrary to Trump’s announcement last week, a summit meeting with Putin in Budapest appeared to be off the table in the near future on Wednesday. Trump expressed skepticism about the possibility of such a meeting: “I don’t want to waste time, so I’ll see what happens.” The White House had previously announced that there would be no personal meeting between the two presidents “in the near future.” Just last Thursday, Trump announced that he wanted to meet with Putin in the Hungarian capital Budapest within two weeks.
However, Moscow said on Wednesday that a summit meeting between Putin and Trump was still being prepared. “We say that preparations for a summit are ongoing,” Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, according to Russian state news agency Tass. Although it is a “difficult process”, he sees no “significant obstacles” to such a meeting.
In response to Trump’s recent comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Nobody wants to waste time, neither President Trump nor President Putin.” He reiterated that there was no fixed time frame for a meeting yet. Peskov criticized that there were “a lot of rumors” surrounding the summit. Most of them are “completely baseless.”
The Washington Post reported that Russia was angered by Trump’s demand for an immediate end to fighting on the front lines in Ukraine. The paper quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying that the ceasefire demanded by Trump contradicts the agreements between Putin and Trump at their last summit in Alaska. At that time, Lavrov argued, Trump gave up his pressure on Putin to stop fighting before peace negotiations with Ukraine.
Trump and Putin met in Alaska in August for talks about Ukraine. There was no breakthrough for a peace solution. From a Western perspective, it recently seemed as if the US President was approaching Putin again after he spoke on the phone with the Kremlin chief last Thursday. At an apparently frosty meeting with the Ukrainian head of state Zelensky in the White House last Friday, Trump publicly called for the cession of territory to Russia in Donbass in eastern Ukraine.
Trump then told reporters that Ukraine and Russia should end fighting along the current front line. “Anything else would be very difficult to negotiate,” emphasized Trump. Regarding the Donbass, he said: “Let it be divided as it is now.” As the AFP news agency learned from Ukrainian government circles, Trump even put pressure on Zelensky at the meeting in Washington to completely give up the eastern Donbass region – and thus also areas of the region currently controlled by Ukraine – in exchange for peace.
Zelenskyj now signaled support for the idea of freezing the current front line. Trump suggested “staying where we are and starting talks,” said Zelenskyj on Wednesday during his short visit to Oslo. “I think it’s a good compromise.” However, he doubts that Putin will also agree to this. He said that to Trump too.
According to information from Stockholm, Zelenskyj wanted to travel on to neighboring Sweden after his visit to Oslo. Together with Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, an “announcement in the area of arms exports” was planned. As the AFP also learned from Ukrainian government circles, Zelensky is also expected in Brussels this week at the EU summit on Thursday and in London on Friday at a meeting of Western allies from the “Coalition of the Willing”.
Meanwhile, Russia once again launched a massive wave of attacks on Ukraine. At least seven people were killed and there were power outages across the country.
According to Zelensky, a kindergarten was hit in the eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv. In images he published on online services, rescue workers could be seen carrying children out of the partially collapsed building. After the attacks, Zelenskyj said in online services that Russia apparently “didn’t feel enough pressure.”
Russia fired 405 drones and 28 missiles into Ukraine by Wednesday morning, the Ukrainian Air Force said. Most of them were intercepted. The Ukrainian capital was particularly affected. AFP reporters in Kyiv heard numerous explosions. According to Ukrainian Energy Minister Svitlana Grinchuk, the attacks also targeted the country’s energy infrastructure.
