Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticised Budapest as a venue for peace talks due to Viktor Orban’s Russia-friendly stance. Photo / Aaron Schwartz, Washington Post
Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticised Budapest as a venue for peace talks due to Viktor Orban’s Russia-friendly stance. Photo / Aaron Schwartz, Washington Post
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Budapest wasn’t the best place for talks to end the war in Ukraine because of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Russia-friendly stance, but he’d still come if invited.
“I do not believe that a prime minister who blocks Ukraine everywhere can do anything positive forUkrainians or even provide a balanced contribution,” Zelenskyy said of Orban, who has repeatedly sought to stall European Union sanctions on Russia and travelled to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Still, Zelenskyy said he’d consider an invitation to Budapest. “If it’s an invitation in a format where the three of us meet, or, as it’s called, shuttle diplomacy, where President Trump meets with Putin and President Trump meets with me – then, in one format or another, we’ll agree to it,” he said.
US President Donald Trump announced plans to meet Putin in the Hungarian capital in the coming weeks following a phone call with the Russian leader last week, less than three months after their August summit meeting at a US military base in Alaska ended with little visible progress on ending the war.
Trump hosted Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday and later urged both sides to make a deal, telling them to “stop right now at the battle line” as he equivocated over military aid to Ukraine and the threat of new sanctions on Russia. The US President suggested the possibility of meeting Putin and Zelenskyy separately but appeared to back away from the earlier idea that the two would meet face to face.
US President Donald Trump, left, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine's president, at the White House. Photo / Getty Images
“We have communicated both publicly and privately that we are ready for a meeting in any format that will be effective,” Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv. “I do not consider Budapest to be the best venue for such a meeting. Obviously, if it can bring peace, it will not matter which country hosts the meeting.”
Zelenskyy said he “devoted sufficient time to a meeting” with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff to explain why Budapest wasn’t a suitable place to host the peace talks. He said other options included Switzerland, Austria, the Vatican, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.
EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday also criticised the choice of venue for a summit. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said “the presence of Vladimir Putin on EU soil only makes sense if it allows for an immediate ceasefire without conditions”.
French President Emmanuel Macron said later that leaders of countries in the Coalition of the Willing would meet in London later this week.
The summit plan has unsettled European officials. They fear being sidelined as Trump pushes to negotiate directly with Putin against their advice and on their territory.
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for peace talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. Photo / Getty Images
Zelenskiy said he told Trump that Budapest as a venue for talks would also be bad for his country from a historical perspective, because it’s where Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet nuclear weapons in 1994 in return for assurances from Russia, the US and UK to safeguard its territorial integrity. Russia broke the so-called Budapest Memorandum when it seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
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