Trump to hold summit with Putin in Budapest where Russia promised not to invade Ukraine

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is touting another meeting with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin about his country’s invasion of Ukraine, this time in Budapest, Hungary, the city where Russia vowed not to invade Ukraine three decades ago if it gave up its nuclear weapons.

“We will meet in Hungary. Viktor Orbán will be the host,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, referring to his friend, that country’s authoritarian president.

Trump’s announcement came after a phone call with Putin and on the eve of his planned White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

It is unclear whether Trump is aware of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia pledged to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Putin first violated that promise in 2014, when he invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula, and again in 2022 with his full-scale invasion.

Trump met with Putin in Alaska in August, which ended without the ceasefire that Trump had said Putin should accept. It is unclear why Budapest was chosen as the location for the next meeting.

In response to News themezone’s question about who suggested Budapest, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded, “Your mom did it,” and White House communications director Steven Cheung responded, “Your mom.”

“I’m sure Trump doesn’t know and he doesn’t care,” said Jim Townsend, who has worked at both the Pentagon and NATO and is now an analyst at the Center for a New American Security. “Trump likes Orban and probably thinks he’s doing him a big favor. Plus, Putin is a friend of Orban. Most of the world wouldn’t consider Budapest as neutral ground for such a meeting, but I guess Trump and Putin would.”

Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images

Jan Techau, an analyst at the Berlin-based Center for European Policy Analysis, said he did not know whether Trump would see any irony in holding such a meeting in Budapest.

“The visit there is useful to him on many fronts. He can demonstrate his absolute willingness to mediate peace, he can support his friend Viktor and hit the rest of the Europeans in their own backyard, he can be both pro-Ukrainian and pro-Putin, he recognizes the Central Europeans’ need for the presence and reassurance of the United States, and he can show the ICC once again what he thinks of them.”

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Putin and other senior Russian officials accused of war crimes in Ukraine. While most European nations respect the ICC’s findings, the United States does not.

Trump initially praised Putin for his “genius” and “cunning” when he invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and then began blaming Zelenskyy for the invasion of his country and former President Joe Biden for allowing it to happen.

In recent months, Trump has begun criticizing Putin for his murderous attacks on civilians through near-nightly missile and drone attacks on residential areas. In recent weeks, Trump has said he is willing to sell American weapons to other NATO allies to deliver to Ukraine, including Tomahawk cruise missiles that would allow Ukraine to hit targets deep inside Russia.

On Thursday, Trump again expressed his inability to understand why Zelenskyy (whose citizens are massacred almost daily) and Putin (accused as a war criminal) cannot get along.

“I mean, we have a problem. Those two don’t get along very well,” he said. “This is a terrible relationship that the two of them have, and it’s one of those things.”