Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has criticized the idea of possible talks between the leaders of Ukraine and Russia on ending the war in Budapest. In doing so, he riddled the 1994 Budapest memorandum, which gave Ukraine “security guarantees” in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“Budapest? Not everyone remembers this, but in 1994 Ukraine had already received guarantees of territorial integrity from the US, Russia and the UK. Budapest. Perhaps I am superstitious, but this time I would try to find another place,” Tusk wrote on 20 August on social network X.
The day before, Bloomberg and Reuters cited their sources as saying that US President Donald Trump called Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Monday after talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders to discuss, among other things, potential future talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on ending Russia’s war in the Hungarian capital Budapest.
After talks with Zelensky and European leaders on 18 August, the US president announced that he was preparing a leaders-level meeting between Ukraine and Russia, and admitted that a trilateral summit with his participation would then take place as well.
The exact time and venue are still unclear. Besides Budapest, Geneva in Switzerland, Istanbul in Turkey, and Alaska were also mentioned as locations, while Trump himself had previously suggested Alaska. Alexander Lukashenko’s office also suggested Minsk.