Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Wednesday criticized the idea of Budapest being a potential venue for peace talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Budapest? Not everyone may remember this, but in 1994 Ukraine already got assurances of territorial integrity from the US, Russia and the UK. In Budapest,” Tusk said. “Maybe I’m superstitious, but this time I would try to find another place.”
POLITICO revealed Tuesday that the White House is exploring a trilateral meeting including U.S. President Donald Trump in the Hungarian capital, citing an administration official and a person close to the administration.
But Hungary would be an uneasy venue for Ukraine. The 1994 memorandum, signed there by the U.S., U.K., Ukraine and Russia, pledged to respect Kyiv’s sovereignty in exchange for its nuclear disarmament. But Putin’s 2014 assault on Ukraine and the lack of military support from signatories rendered the guarantees essentially meaningless.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a close ally of Trump who has continued to cultivate ties with the Kremlin despite Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has not yet publicly commented.
On Feb. 25, 2022, one day after Russia attacked Ukraine, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó suggested Budapest even then as a safe location “for both the Ukrainian and Russian sides.”
Russian officials have tempered expectations that any sort of encounter between Putin and Zelenskyy was on the horizon, and uncertainty clouds any potential choice of venue.
During an interview published Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested Geneva as a possible site, an idea that was quickly backed by Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis confirmed Switzerland is “ready for such a meeting,” adding that Putin would not face arrest despite an International Criminal Court warrant for war crimes.
Putin, during his surprise phone call with Trump on Monday, suggested Moscow as a possible venue for a one-on-one with Zelenskyy. That proposal, however, was immediately dismissed as a serious suggestion by Zelenskyy and European leaders during the multilateral meeting with Trump at the White House.
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