Orban still prepping for Putin-Trump summit in Budapest
Preparations for the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Budapest are ongoing, but its dates have not been set, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Wednesday.
"Szijjártó (Hungarian Foreign Minister – IF-U) is in Washington. Preparations for the peace summit are ongoing. The date is still uncertain. When the time comes, we will hold it. Tomorrow, at the Peace March, we will show the world that the choice of Budapest was not accidental. This happened because Hungary is an island of peace, and Hungarians stand on the side of peace," Orbán wrote on his Facebook page.
As reported, last Thursday, after a telephone conversation between Trump and Putin, the latter’s assistant Yuri Ushakov said that preparations for the planned meeting of the leaders of the two countries in Budapest would begin with contacts between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
However, on Tuesday evening, the White House announced that Trump had no intention of meeting with Putin in the near future, as did Rubio with Lavrov.
Earlier, it was reported that Trump’s hopes for a quick meeting with Putin could be dashed after it became known that Rubio’s meeting with Lavrov had been postponed. On October 16, after talking with Putin, Trump said that they "agreed that next week our high-level advisers will meet," but a White House representative told the publication that the preliminary meeting between the US Secretary of State and the Russian Foreign Minister had been postponed for now. One of the sources said that Rubio and Lavrov have different expectations regarding the possible end of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The day before, Reuters, citing informed sources, reported that Rubio could meet with Lavrov on October 23.
