Zelensky Says He Is Ready to Join Trump-Putin Peace Talks in Hungary

[Da Lat]

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Zelensky Says He Is Ready to Join Trump-Putin Peace Talks in Hungary




WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 17: U.S. President Donald Trump (L) greets Ukrainian President VoAndrew Harnik/Getty Images


Frances Martel
20 Oct 2025


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told NBC News that he is “ready” to engage Russian strongman Vladimir Putin directly to negotiate an end to Russia’s invasion of his country, potentially at a proposed summit in Hungary, the state outlet Ukrinform reported on Sunday.


Zelensky made the remarks following a visit to the White House and a one-on-one meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday. Trump stated during the engagement that, following the signing of a peace agreement to end the war in Gaza last week, he intends to focus America’s foreign policy on achieving a sustainable peace for Ukraine. Trump welcomed Putin to Alaska for in-person dialogue on the matter in August, but the talks did not achieve any significant changes for the situation on the ground in Ukraine. Putin has repeatedly rejected any substantive talks towards peace, opting instead for rehashing the entire timeline of the history of Russia.

“If we really want to have just and lasting peace, we need both sides of this tragedy,” Zelensky reportedly told NBC News in his recent interview, insisting that any talks towards ending the war in Ukraine must include the leadership in Kyiv. “How can there be some deals without us about us?”

To that end, Ukrinform reported, Zelensky said he was “ready” to meet Trump and Putin in Budapest, Hungary, for any relevant negotiation. Zelensky said that he told Trump this in person during their recent exchanges.

Top Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked about Zelensky’s comments on Monday, but offered no clarity on whether Russian leaders would accept or reject Zelensky’s presence in Budapest.

“There are no details yet regarding the meeting the two presidents discussed,” Peskov stated vaguely.

Following his conversations with Trump in the White House, Zelensky said in messages on social media that “diplomatic prospects” to end the war were “of course” on the list of topics the two heads of state addressed. Zelensky said that he and Trump spoke for over two hours about the situation and every “key issue” surfaced in the talks.

Over two hours of a pointed conversation with the President of the United States @POTUS that can really help bring this war closer to an end. We discussed all key issues – our positions on the battlefield, long-range capabilities and air defense, and, of course, diplomatic… pic.twitter.com/5EeXv9AYg7

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 17, 2025

The engagement with Zelensky followed the revelation on Thursday from Trump had he had spoken to Putin and that the latter had agreed to meet Trump in Hungary. Prior to that, however, Trump explained in a Truth Social post that he would have America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, lead a group of negotiators to engage the Russian side. Trump also stated that Putin, in his remarks to Trump, thanked First Lady Melania Trump for her efforts to pressure Russia to return abducted Ukrainian children to their families, stating that the Russian leader was “very appreciative” of the First Lady’s letter to him imploring that he address the human rights disaster he had created for Ukrainian children.

“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,” Trump affirmed.

“President Putin congratulated me and the United States on the Great Accomplishment of Peace in the Middle East, something that, he said, has been dreamed of for centuries,” Trump added. “I actually believe that the Success in the Middle East will help in our negotiation in attaining an end to the War with Russia/Ukraine.”

Hungary appears to have been chosen as a location due to its friendly disposition to Trump and hostile disposition towards Ukraine. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a close ally of communist China’s, engaged in a “peace mission” to both Moscow and Kyiv last year and has publicly emphasized ending the hostilities while addressing European Union concerns regarding Putin’s conquest of Ukrainian land. Reports surfaced in August that Orbán had offered his country as an appropriate meeting place for the Russian and American leaders. It is not clear at press time if Orbán would similarly accommodate Zelensky, with whom he once engaged in a very loud and public argument at the inauguration of Argentine President Javier Milei — the two nearly stumbling over Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, unfortunately seated between them.

Orbán celebrated Trump’s choice of Budapest as a meeting center in his own message on Friday, describing his country as the only option in Europe for such an engagement.

The last time Zelensky and Putin met in person was in 2019, early in Zelensky’s presidential tenure, as part of what was called the “Normandy Format” with France and Germany. At the time, Putin had not yet launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, instead supporting separatist forces fighting in the eastern Donbass region; Putin had annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014.

The 2019 “Normandy format” meeting was thoroughly unproductive, leaving Zelensky lamenting it as a waste of time.

“Look, it’s very difficult to negotiate [with Putin], but today there were moments when we agreed on something, on certain things,” Zelensky told reporters, according to the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN. “That’s because he dissects every question into details… and then we begin to even consider every word. So yes, this is difficult. I’m just a different person, I’m a quick person. I thought that we could just sit down real quick and have a deal.”

Putin celebrated that occasion as “good and business-like,” pronouncing himself “happy” with the outcome, or lack thereof.

Two years later, shortly before the full-scale invasion, Zelensky demanded that “serious” countries — as opposed to France and Germany — take the mantle of helping host negotiations to prevent a further expansion of Russia’s aggression. The United States, then under the command of former President Joe Biden, did not heed the call, instead lifting sanctions on Russia, which immediately preceded Putin’s full invasion.


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Fromm Breitbart
Link: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/202...ks-in-hungary/





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