Donald Trump announces second peace summit with Putin on Ukraine

U.S. President Donald Trump says he will meet with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, to try once again to negotiate an end to Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Trump announced the meeting after a lengthy phone call Thursday with the Russian leader, which Trump called “very productive.”

After rolling out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska two months ago, for talks that failed to lead to a Ukrainian peace deal, Trump says they’ll try again.

“President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this “inglorious” war, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end,” said Trump.

“It was a very good and productive call, it lasted more than two hours, there were various issues that were discussed,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

The White House hasn’t shared many details about Thursday’s phone call, outside what is in Trump’s social media post:

• that Putin congratulated him on his peace deal in Gaza, and Trump believes that success will help lead to a peace deal in Ukraine;
• that high-level American and Russian advisors will meet next week, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio leading the U.S. side;
• and that Trump will discuss the call when he meets with Ukraine’s president tomorrow.

“Its clear that President Trump really does want to see some progress here,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist with the University of Mary Washington. “That he’s coming back to this issue despite not having much success with it, I think, speaks volumes to that.”

Farnsworth says Trump wants to bring peace to Ukraine, after his successful peace talks in Gaza, but the big question is what will Putin do.

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“This war can end as soon as he says he’s ready to end it — the war has been devastating to the Russian economy, [it’s] certainly unpopular within the people within Russia, and so perhaps Putin is deciding that it is time to move off the idea that Ukraine should become part of Russia,” said Farnsworth.

Thursday’s phone call was requested by the Russians, with a Kremlin aide calling the talks, “highly informative and extremely frank.”

The Kremlin says Russian Diplomat Sergei Lavrov will speak with Rubio in the coming days, to prepare for the summit in Budapest.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy landed in the states Thursday ahead of his Friday talk with Trump.

The meeting comes as Ukrainian troops near the front say U.S.-supplied Tomahawk missiles could shift the war in Ukraine’s favour.

Trump said Sunday he was considering providing the weapons, capable of striking deep within Russia, as the U.S. president is frustrated with Moscow’s failure to end its war.

But the sale of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine was cautioned against by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who said it would be impossible for Russia to know if the weapons were carrying a nuclear warhead.

Medvedev signaled the response to Tomahawks being launched into Russia could be a Russian nuclear launch.

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