Trump says Putin Budapest summit could be back on in meeting with Orban

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Friday that he may still meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest while hosting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at the White House.

“There’s always a chance — very good chance,” Trump told reporters of a possible Putin summit, after scrapping the planned meetup last month over fears that there wouldn’t be progress toward ending Putin’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine.

Moments later, Trump said, “I’d like to keep it in Hungary, Budapest — that meeting, it turned out I didn’t want to do that meeting because I didn’t think anything was going to be happening of significance. But if we have it, I’d like to do it in Budapest, yeah.”

Democrats had criticized the choice of venue for Trump’s second summit with Putin, following an August meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, pointing out that Ukraine agreed in the same city in 1994 to give up its post-Soviet nuclear weapons in exchange for Russia agreeing to respect the country’s borders.

“Victor, he understands Putin and knows him very well… Victor feels we’re going to get that war ended in the not too distant future,” Trump said of the Hungarian leader, who is one of the least pro-Ukraine leaders of the NATO nations.

“The only pro-peace government is the United States government and small Hungary in Europe,” Orban said.

“All the other governments prefer to continue the war, because many of them think that Ukraine can win on the frontline, which is a misunderstanding of the situation.”

Later, Orban said it would be a “miracle” for Ukraine to prevail.

Orban said he expected to “negotiate” with Trump to gain an exemption from US sanctions on Russian oil and natural gas companies— and afterwards said he gained one.

The Hungarian leader said, however, that he would seek “big investments” to expand a Croatian oil pipeline to negate the need for Russian fuel.