Trump-Putin: can Budapest summit bring progress?
Donald Trump wants a summit with Vladimir Putin in Budapest. Although US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed the idea on the phone on Monday, it is not clear whether the two will meet in person for a preparatory meeting. According to CNN their positions are too far apart, and Moscow has refused to confirm that such a meeting has been agreed on. Europe's press looks at what a summit in Hungary could achieve - provided it takes place.
No one will go home happy
For a long-term solution, all parties must meet at the negotiating table on an equal footing, writes Diário de Notícias:
“Only one thing is certain: neither Trump nor Putin nor Zelensky can count on an outcome that is 100 percent favourable for them. Europe also has its expectations, especially those countries that for historical reasons fear an expansionist Russia the most, such as Poland and the Baltic states or Finland. They are counting on the defence of Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty as the key guarantee for the preservation of their own integrity and sovereignty against an enemy they do not trust.”
China is the real issue
In the Moscow Times, Ukrainian sociologist Viktor Neboshenko says other interests are at play for Trump at this meeting:
“We should not believe that Russian aggression in Ukraine and the suspension of the war will be the main focus of Trump's negotiations with Putin in Budapest. This is a good pretext, but both are of course aware that Ukraine has no intention of surrendering and swapping territory - whether or not it gets Tomahawks. Trump's mission is not to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, it is another attempt to bully Putin into betraying Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping has clearly been having problems recently, and Trump is in a hurry to exploit them.”
Realism prevails
It is right that the EU won't be at the negotiating table, says the pro-government online media Vasárnap:
“It's pointless for politicians in Brussels to complain that they should also have a place at the table at the peace summit in Budapest. That's simply not the case because there's a huge difference between Washington's goals and those of Brussels. Brussels wants one of the conflicting parties to win, while the US government just wants peace, with both sides making concessions and abandoning some of their goals. And let's not kid ourselves: that's the only realistic position today.”
Just cheap tricks from Europe
Zelensky can't count on much support from the Europeans, writes Die Welt:
“The grandiloquent debates about security guarantees have so far been nothing but entertainment for an astonished audience in Ukraine and Europe. The pledges from Europe to send arms collapsed dramatically in the summer. Additional billions to support Ukraine are now to be scraped together through a sleight of hand by Brussels, which will provide access to previously frozen Russian assets ('reparation loans'). If Europe doesn't finally start doing more, Putin will soon win this war.”
Returning to a crime scene
The choice of Budapest as summit venue does not bode well, Maszol writes:
“It's as if the perpetrators were returning to the scene of the crime: as if the major powers that signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, which was supposed to guarantee Ukraine's territorial integrity and state sovereignty in exchange for its nuclear weapons, were now returning to make peace, thereby admitting that their signatures and words at the time were worthless. If that was the case thirty years ago, in a world that was truly striving for peace and had thus reached the 'end of history', why should the meeting be more credible in today's much more conflict-ridden world?”
Zelensky could be left empty-handed
This is an affront to Europe, La Repubblica writes:
“In the end, Putin always succeeds. He appeases Trump, calms him down, gets him to abandon his threats and ultimatums and make concessions. After the bilateral meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, United States, Vladimir Putin has managed to secure another meeting with Donald Trump in Budapest, Hungary, European Union. This is a slap in the face for the Old Continent, which has become Moscow's new official enemy No. 1. ... And it's a defeat for Volodymyr Zelensky, who will probably return empty-handed from his meeting with Trump today.”
Effective empathy trick
Political scientist Abbas Gallyamov praised Trump's communication strategy on Facebook even before the new summit was agreed on:
“In calling on Putin to end the war, Trump constantly emphasises that it is not only Ukrainians who are dying, but Russians too. This is an effective message that prevents the US president from being perceived as 'Russia's enemy'. ... In his rhetoric on the war, Trump has downplayed the political component and focused exclusively on the humanitarian aspect of the problem. He doesn't talk about who is right and who is wrong, who is the aggressor and who is the victim. ... As a means of putting pressure on Putin, this is the right approach. Compared to the US leader, the Russian president now comes across as a ruthless man who is unafraid to sacrifice people in the name of politics.”
Just a bluff?
The promise to deliver long-range missiles was probably just a way of exerting pressure, Corriere della Sera believes:
“Even though Zelensky's return to the Oval Office will take place in a very different atmosphere than that in February, when he was cornered, it is by no means certain that he will return home with a green light to purchase weapons that are considered essential for the ongoing DeepStrike campaign against strategic targets in Russian territory. ... While the Kremlin spoke of a 'dangerous escalation', observers had already pointed out in recent days that the Tomahawks could be just a bluff by Trump to force Putin to the negotiating table.”
Pendulum swinging back towards Kremlin boss
Diplomat and politician Roman Bezsmertnyi comments on Facebook:
“This is clearly a topic for psychologists - how Putin understands Trump's narcissistic nature: he thanked him for the peace in the Middle East, expressed hope for further cooperation with First Lady Melania Trump on the return of Ukrainian children, and began to talk about the possibility of trade relations with the US after the end of the Russian-Ukrainian war. And already the pendulum has swung back in Moscow's favour: Donald Trump announced on social media that a meeting with Russia at the highest level was being prepared for the coming week. In another post, the US president surprised everyone with the announcement that he plans to meet Putin in Budapest.”
Only a fair deal would be a success
It's by no means certain that this meeting will be good for Hungary's image, warns foreign policy expert and former liberal MEP István Szent-Iványi on Facebook:
“The big question, of course, is how this war will end. Will a fair deal be reached, which doesn't seem likely given the people involved, or will they jointly betray Ukraine and throw it under the bus? We may dare to hope that the former will be the case, but the latter wouldn't come as a big surprise either. For Budapest, this meeting will only bring glory if it doesn't become another Munich or Yalta but the venue where a fair agreement is reached.”