Zelensky says that the Druzhba (friendship) between Kiev and Budapest ‘will depend on Hungary’s actions’.
Orbán made it clear that Zelensky’s threats will not be forgiven or forgotten.
We have been reported how the repeated Ukrainian missile attacks on the Druzhba (meaning ‘friendship’) pipeline cut the flow of crude oil from Russia to both Hungary and Slovakia.
And what became an internet spat between the Hungarian and Ukrainian foreign ministers escalated now to a controversy between Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky and Hungarian President Viktor Orbán.
‘IT’S VERY, VERY SERIOUS WHAT I HAVE IN MIND’: Despite being rebuffed at every turn, President Donald Trump is still holding out hope that Russia will come to the table to negotiate an end to the more than three-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine.
At a marathon broadcast Cabinet meeting that ran more than three hours, Trump indicated that despite his frustration, he’s ready to wage economic warfare against Russia to increase the pressure on Vladimir Putin. “It’s very, very serious what I have in mind, if I have to do it. But I want to see it end,” Trump said. “We have economic sanctions. I’m talking about economic. Because we’re not going to get into a world war.”
“Over the last couple of weeks, over 12,000 people died in, like, in two weeks,” Trump said. “They were Russian, they were Ukrainian, they weren’t American. So, a lot of people would say, ‘What do you care? They’re not American.’ I care. They’re 12,000.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced that Canada will keep troops in Latvia through to 2029, as part of a mission to deter Russian aggression in Europe that has given Ottawa an outsized role in the transatlantic alliance.
“We must deter and fortify. And that is the way that we can provide true reassurance,” Carney said at a Tuesday news conference in Riga, flanked by Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina.
Carney’s office says there are now 2,000 Canadian Armed Forces troops in Latvia as part of Operation Reassurance, which is Canada’s largest overseas mission. Canadian troops have been there since 2017 to strengthen the defence of Europe’s eastern flank and to deter Russian from invading Baltic countries, through what many call a “trip wire.”
Ukraine admitted for the first time on Tuesday that Russian forces had entered the central Dnipropetrovsk region, saying fighting there was ongoing. The battlefield monitor DeepState said in a social media post that the Russian army was “consolidating its positions” and preparing “for a further advance”.
Voter approval of President Donald Trump surged “upward” following his Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, likely giving him an advantage entering his peace meetings Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other world leaders.
InsiderAdvantage found in its three-day survey that 54% of voters approve of Trump while 44% don’t, a big swing up from where he was entering the Putin meeting.
Pollster Matt Towery said, “Overall, his approval numbers are surging upwards post-summit.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a fiery exchange with a CBS reporter on Sunday, accusing her of pushing a “stupid media narrative” regarding Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting today with U.S. officials.
On yesterday’s “Face the Nation” broadcast, host Margaret Brennan claimed that European leaders were joining Zelenskyy as backup to protect him from being “bullied into signing something away.”
Rubio pushed back hard, telling Brennan, “That is not true. But that’s not true, they’re not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelenskyy from being bullied.”
The party of war is apoplectic over the prospect of peace between Russia and Ukraine. The meeting was preliminary and productive, but it is soon to assess how formative it will be for an end to the war that Trump is pushing for. Roger Kimball: Trump said that he would rank their discussion as very good—”10 out of 10,” he said. He and Putin came to an agreement about a lot of issues. Some issues remained. “There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump acknowledged when the summit concluded. “I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate, and I’ll, of course, call up President Zelensky and tell him about today’s meeting. It’s ultimately up to them.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky can immediately end the Russian invasion “if he wants to” by accepting the terms being offered to him, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote ahead of European leaders descending on Washington en masse on Monday.
Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with President Trump at the White House on Monday and will be supported by the presence of a large delegation of European leaders who say they are determined to see Europe’s perspective on the Ukraine War imposed on peace talks. These talks come as comments from Brussels and Washington make clear a gulf exists between the European maximalist position on international law being in the driving seat, and President Trump’s push for ending the killing by gaining concessions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected in Washington, D.C. Monday, along with a host of European leaders to back him up.
As we’ve reported, a veritable who’s who of Continental elites are expected to make their appearance:NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb confirmed Sunday they would attend the meeting in Washington.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters that he is open to certain concessions in order to achieve peace with Russia, despite rejecting the ideas in the past.
Zelenskyy spoke to reporters in Brussels over the weekend, not long after President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Alaska for a historic summit.
During the meeting, Putin said that Ukraine would need to abandon its Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the eastern border as a condition for peace. Zelenskyy responded to the demands and announced what he is considering an arrangement.
President Donald Trump revealed on Sunday night that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted their summit meeting to be held “anywhere” but the United States, saying it was “very hard” for Putin to make an appearance in Alaska for the high-stakes meeting.
Trump made the revelation in a Truth Social post on Sunday night, in which he took aim at the media over criticism of having Putin on U.S. soil for a summit that ultimately ended with no ceasefire or peace deal in the Ukraine war.
“The Fake News has been saying for 3 days that I suffered a ‘major defeat’ by allowing President Vladimir Putin of Russia to have a major Summit in the United States. Actually, he would have loved doing the meeting anywhere else but the U.S., and the Fake News knows this. It was a major point of contention!” the U.S. president said.
Is it a desperate lurch for relevance? Maybe something served up as “proof” that they do great journalism in need of public support? Or is it a desire to shame the administration that recently yanked its federal funding? Regardless of the motivation, National Public Radio has just shamed itself with what it was certain was an explosive exposé from the recent summit held between President Trump and Vladimir Putin.
NATO defense chiefs held a “candid discussion” Wednesday about what security guarantees they could offer Kyiv to help forge a peace agreement that ends Russia’s three-year war on Ukraine, a senior alliance official said.
Italian Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, said that 32 defense chiefs from across the alliance held a video conference amid a U.S.-led diplomatic push to end the fighting.
He said there was a “great, candid discussion” in the call. “I thanked everyone for their always proactive participation in these meetings: we are united, and that unity was truly tangible today, as always,” he wrote on social platform X without providing further details.
President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in Alaska in a historic attempt to end the more than two-year war between Ukraine and Russia. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, tens of thousands have died, while millions have been displaced. The Alaska summit marked the first serious step toward direct negotiations between Moscow and Kiev.
But for ABC News’ Martha Raddatz and the rest of the propaganda press, a Trump-negotiated peace itself was a problem. Instead of acknowledging the significance of Trump’s diplomacy, Raddatz spent her Sunday segment disparaging the president for daring to treat Putin like a foreign leader who can choose to keep the war going rather than a pariah.
European and NATO leaders are joining Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington on Monday to present a united front in talks with President Donald Trump as US special envoy Steve Witkoff on Sunday said Russia is open to the idea of the US and its European allies offering Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO’s collective defence mandate.
President Donald Trump seemed to crack on Truth Social Sunday as he condemned the media for reporting on his apparent pro-Russia stance following his Alaska summit with Vladimir Putin.
Instead of pursuing a ceasefire agreement as originally planned, Trump said he would try to convince Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to concede land to the Kremlin in order to put an end to the more than three-year war.
Critics saw this outcome as an obvious bow to Putin, but the president disagreed.
“It’s incredible how the Fake News violently distorts the TRUTH when it comes to me. There is NOTHING I can say or do that would lead them to write or report honestly about me.” Trump wrote on social media.
The speed with which it has been organised is remarkable. A diplomatic source has framed the hasty gathering as “organic”; the obvious next step after the Alaska summit, the source said.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul on Monday called for stepped-up pressure on Russia, including more aid for Ukraine, to push Moscow into concessions toward a “just and lasting peace.”
Wadephul spoke in Tokyo as U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The gathering follows Trump’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.
“It is probably not an exaggeration to say the whole world is looking to Washington,” he said at a press briefing alongside Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya.
As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders prepare for talks in the White House, Russia has continued to pound targets including a deadly strike on a residential building in Kharkiv.
Just hours before the talks with US President Donald Trump, the Kharkiv strike killed seven people, including two children, and injured at least 20 others.
“Among the dead are a 1.5-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy. The youngest injured is just 6 years old,” Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said, declaring a citywide day of mourning.
It promises to be a day unlike any other at the White House later, when world leaders make a rare collective visit for crunch talks on Ukraine.
What had been billed as a meeting between two presidents, Donald Trump and Volodomyr Zelensky, has now become more of a summit.
Leaders from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Finland, the EU and Nato have dashed across the Atlantic to have their say on how the three-year-old war with Russia should end and on what terms.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to London on Thursday, a day before a critical U.S.-Russia summit in Alaska.
“Yesterday, together with all partners, today in a bilateral format, we discussed expectations from the meeting in Alaska and possible prospects,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post after the meeting. “We also discussed in detail security guarantees that can make peace truly sustainable if the United States still manages to pressure Russia to stop the killings and engage in real meaningful diplomacy. It is important that we can all work together within a coalition of those willing to achieve effective formats for security work.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer praised President Donald Trump during a gathering of European leaders ahead of the U.S.-Russia meeting in Alaska.
Starmer, who has maintained a tense but friendly relationship with the White House, championed Trump for arranging the meeting in Anchorage on Friday.
“For three and a bit years this conflict has been going, we haven’t got anywhere near … a viable way of bringing it to a ceasefire,” Starmer said. “Now we do have that chance, because of the work that the president has put in.”