US President Donald Trump, after a two-hour conversation with Vladimir Putin, announced the preparation of a second meeting with him, this time to be held in Budapest. This move has raised concerns both in Kyiv and among US allies in Europe, writes Bloomberg.
Trump described his actions as a plan for the final settlement of the conflict. Meanwhile, as Axios writes, the President of Ukraine, who is supposed to meet with Trump today, learned about the new US president's plan upon arriving in Washington.
During a briefing with journalists on Thursday, Trump avoided answering questions about the possibility of supplying long-range «Tomahawk» missiles and the Senate's intention to impose tough sanctions against Russia. «We also need «Tomahawks» for the United States of America,— Trump told journalists in the Oval Office. So I don't know what we can do about it». According to Trump, now is «not the most appropriate time for sanctions, but it could happen in a week or two».
The preparation of a new meeting also weakens the pressure that was exerted on Putin in recent weeks when Trump expressed disappointment with the Kremlin's reluctance to end the war.
«Putin is essentially buying time by delaying the delivery of much-needed American weapons to Ukraine and the imposition of energy sanctions promised by Trump», believes Maria Snegova, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia in the «Europe, Russia, and Eurasia» program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The venue for the planned Trump-Putin summit — Budapest — is also likely to be viewed skeptically by European allies as an attempt by the Kremlin to drive a wedge between the US and Europe.
According to Celeste Wallander, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a high-ranking Pentagon official, for Trump, holding a second summit with Putin is fraught with significant risk if the White House does not plan to simultaneously impose sanctions against Russia. If the summit ends without an acceptable agreement, it will again «allow Putin to take advantage of the opportunity to send a signal to the world that he is somehow in control of the situation», she said.