Orbán Announces Trump–Putin Meeting in Budapest, Hailing Hungary’s ‘Neutral Role’

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) - In a triumphant and self-congratulatory address, Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday celebrated his country's selection as the host for a high-stakes summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a meeting where the two leaders are expected to once again attempt to find a path to end the war in Ukraine.

Speaking on state radio, Orbán, a close ally of President Trump and widely considered to be President Putin's closest partner within the European Union, cast Budapest as the continent's last bastion of peace, suggesting that his long and often controversial opposition to arming Ukraine had uniquely positioned his nation to serve as a neutral ground for the critical talks. 

"Budapest is essentially the only place in Europe today where such a meeting could be held, primarily because Hungary is almost the only pro-peace country," he declared, according to the Associated Press.

The announcement of the upcoming summit, which President Trump said could happen in about two weeks, came on Thursday, just a day before he was scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House.

According to reports from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, President Trump and President Putin held a "productive" and lengthy phone call on Thursday, during which they agreed to hold the in-person meeting in the Hungarian capital.

The call itself, and the subsequent announcement of another summit, represents a significant development in President Trump's handling of the Ukraine war, a familiar pattern of escalating pressure followed by a swift pivot to diplomacy.

In the days leading up to the call, President Trump had been publicly and privately signaling that he was seriously considering a major escalation in U.S. military aid to Kyiv, specifically the provision of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles.

As reported by the Associated Press, he had warned Russia that he might send the powerful offensive weapons if Moscow didn't soon agree to a negotiated settlement. However, after his more than two-hour conversation with President Putin, Trump appeared to abruptly back away from that threat. 

"We talked about it a little bit," he said of his discussion about the missiles with Putin, as reported by The New York Times. "We need Tomahawks for the United States of America, too." He went on to say that Putin "didn't like the idea" of the missiles being sent to Ukraine.

This sudden trepidation over further arming Ukraine, immediately following a conversation with the Russian leader, has been described by The New York Times as a "familiar pattern" for President Trump.

On multiple occasions this year, he has come to the brink of imposing new penalties on Russia or providing powerful new weapons to Ukraine, only to reverse course after speaking with Putin and raising fresh hopes for a diplomatic solution, a strategy that has so far yielded little in the way of tangible results.

A previous summit between the two leaders in Alaska in August, which President Trump had proclaimed as a step toward peace, was followed by a continuation of Russia's brutal assault on Ukraine, with Putin showing little public willingness to compromise.

Critics have accused the president of repeatedly falling into a trap, rewarding President Putin with the prestige of a summit meeting without securing any concrete concessions in return.

"After walking away from his Alaska summit with Putin empty-handed, President Trump has now decided to reward Putin again by rolling out the red carpet in Hungary,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement reported by The New York Times. "President Trump is repeating the mistakes of the past by not arming Ukraine to the teeth and letting them win this war."

The Trump administration, however, appears to be emboldened by its recent and substantial diplomatic victory in the Middle East, where it successfully brokered a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas. Having achieved what he sees as a major foreign policy win, President Trump now seems determined to apply his unique brand of deal-making to the Ukraine conflict.

"Who would think I did Middle East before I did this?" he mused to reporters, according to The New York Times.

The choice of Budapest as the venue for this new round of talks is deeply symbolic and, for many, deeply ironic.

As the Associated Press noted, it was in the Hungarian capital in 1994 that the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum, a landmark agreement in which they granted Ukraine assurances of its sovereignty and territorial integrity in exchange for Kyiv giving up its vast, post-Soviet nuclear arsenal.

For many Ukrainians, that agreement is now a bitter symbol of broken promises, a document that proved to be utterly worthless when Moscow shredded it, first with its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and then with its full-scale invasion in 2022.

Prime Minister Orbán, however, sees the summit as a personal and political triumph, a validation of his "pro-peace" stance, which has often put him at odds with his European and NATO partners. "For three years, we have been the only country that has consistently, openly, loudly, and actively advocated for peace,” he said on Friday.

This advocacy has included a steadfast refusal to supply Ukraine with weapons or to even allow their transfer across Hungarian territory. 

He has also repeatedly threatened to veto EU sanctions against Moscow and has held up major EU funding packages for Kyiv. While most of Europe has worked to wean itself off of Russian energy, Hungary has actually increased its supplies of Russian fossil fuels since the 2022 invasion.

This stance, which critics view as favoring the aggressor and splintering European unity, has made Orbán a pariah in many European capitals, but a valued partner for both President Putin and President Trump. 

On Friday, Orbán revealed that he had spoken to President Trump on Thursday evening and was scheduled to speak directly with President Putin on Friday morning to discuss the preparations. For Orbán, who is facing a challenging election in April, hosting such a high-profile diplomatic event is a significant political achievement. “God knows when was the last time there was such an important diplomatic event in Hungary, where we are not simply hosts, but it is also considered a political achievement,” he said, according to the AP.

The summit in Budapest, however, is not without its own legal and diplomatic complications. Hungary is a signatory to the International Criminal Court, which in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for President Putin for war crimes. As a signatory, the Hungarian government would be legally required to arrest President Putin if he were to set foot on its soil.

Orbán, however, has already signaled his intention to disregard this obligation. In April, as reported by the Associated Press, he announced that his country would begin the process of withdrawing from the court after he gave red-carpet treatment to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also faces an ICC warrant.

As the world awaits the final date for this critical summit, the city of Budapest is once again set to become the stage for a major chapter in post-Cold War history, a chapter that will be defined by the complex interplay of power, personality, and the desperate search for peace.