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Zelenskiy Would Join Putin Summit Despite Reservations
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6:15Now PlayingPresident Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Budapest wasn’t the best place for talks to end the war in Ukraine because of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Russia-friendly stance, but he’d still come if invited.
“I do not believe that a prime minister who blocks Ukraine everywhere can do anything positive for Ukrainians or even provide a balanced contribution,” Zelenskiy said of Orban, who has repeatedly sought to stall European Union sanctions on Russia and traveled to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin.
Still, Zelenskiy said he’d consider an invitation to Budapest. “If it’s an invitation in a format where the three of us meet, or, as it’s called, shuttle diplomacy, where President Trump meets with Putin and President Trump meets with me – then, in one format or another, we’ll agree to it,” he said.
Donald Trump announced plans to meet Putin in the Hungarian capital in the coming weeks following a phone call with the Russian leader on Thursday, less than three months after their August summit meeting at a US military base in Alaska ended with little visible progress on ending the war.
Trump hosted Zelenskiy at the White House on Friday and later urged both sides to make a deal, telling them to “stop right now at the battle line” as he equivocated over military aid to Ukraine and the threat of new sanctions on Russia. The US president suggested the possibility of meeting Putin and Zelenskiy separately but appeared to back away from the earlier idea that the two would meet face to face.
Melinda Haring, non-resident senior fellow the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, said she expects Trump to soften his position before the meeting.
“We have communicated both publicly and privately that we are ready for a meeting in any format that will be effective,” Zelenskiy told reporters in Kyiv. “I do not consider Budapest to be the best venue for such a meeting. Obviously, if it can bring peace, it will not matter which country hosts the meeting.”
Zelenskiy said he “devoted sufficient time to a meeting” with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff to explain why Budapest wasn’t a suitable place to host the peace talks. He said other options included Switzerland, Austria, the Vatican, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.
EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday also criticized the choice of venue for a summit. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said “the presence of Vladimir Putin on EU soil only makes sense if it allows for an immediate ceasefire without conditions.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said later that leaders of countries in the Coalition of the Willing would meet in London on Friday.
The summit plan has unsettled European officials. They fear being sidelined as Trump pushes to negotiate directly with Putin against their advice and on their territory.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday and discussed implementing agreements Trump and Putin reached during their Thursday call, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said in a statement.
The Ukrainian leader had hoped the White House talk would be a chance to ratchet up pressure on Putin as he pressed the US to sell his country Tomahawk cruise missiles. But he left Washington empty-handed after Trump declined to arm Ukraine with weapons powerful enough to reach Moscow and targets deep inside Russia.
“The perception that Russia is supposedly winning on the battlefield exists in certain circles in the United States,” Zelenskiy said. “It seems to me that among those who constantly promote the idea of Russia’s so-called unconditional advantages in this war is the current prime minister of Hungary.”
Zelenskiy said he told Trump that Budapest as a venue for talks would also be bad for his country from a historical perspective, because it’s where Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet nuclear weapons in 1994 in return for assurances from Russia, the US and UK to safeguard its territorial integrity. Russia broke the so-called Budapest Memorandum when it seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
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