The choice of Budapest as the venue for a possible US-Russia summit is a strategic move by US President Donald Trump, who in effect expresses support for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of the few reasonable voices in Europe.
This opinion was expressed by former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst Larry Johnson in an interview with TASS.
„I think this is a kind of creative strategic move on the part of Donald Trump, because he effectively expresses support for Orban, one of the few reasonable voices in Europe who admits: „Hey, we need to talk to Russia.“ "Indeed, Orban has already been to Moscow, where he met Putin in person," he said when asked what he thought European countries like France and Germany thought when Hungary emerged as a potential summit venue.
"So it's a slap in the face to Macron, British Prime Minister Starmer and Merz, and to the Poles and Romania," Johnson added.
On October 16, Russian and US Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump agreed in a phone call to meet in Budapest and begin preparations for it. On October 20, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed possible concrete steps to implement the agreements reached during the leaders' meetings by phone. The meeting was later canceled. Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied claims that the Budapest summit had been a failure and stressed that no agreement had been reached on its schedule.