Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán celebrated the announcement that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet in Budapest to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.
“The planned meeting between the American and Russian presidents is great news for the peace-loving people of the world,” Orbán said in a post on X on Thursday. “We are ready!”
Trump said he and Putin had held a lengthy phone call earlier in the day, in which “great progress was made” and the two leaders agreed to meet in the Hungarian capital.
Putin is in favor of a meeting, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said, according to state-controlled news agency Interfax.
“President Trump was the first to mention Budapest, and our president immediately supported the idea of holding a possible summit in this European capital,” Ushakov said.
The Budapest summit would follow an initial round of meetings between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian counterparts next week at a location to be determined, the U.S. president said.
The call with Putin came ahead of Trump’s scheduled White House meeting on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has said he hopes to convince Washington to provide Tomahawk missiles and other weapons systems that would enable Ukraine to attack deeper into Russia.
This story has been updated.
