US president reveals plan to meet Russian ruler again as Ukrainian president visits Washington; EU’s fuel importers will have to prove it’s not Russian. What we know on day 1,332
Volodymr Zelenskyy has said in Washington that Vladimir Putin’s decision to seek talks with Donald Trump shows the Russian president is on the defensive. “We can already see that Moscow is rushing to resume dialogue as soon as it hears about Tomahawks,” Zelenskyy said, referring to the US president’s musings about supplying the long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine. Trump on Wednesday said he was making plans to meet Putin in Budapest, Hungary, where both the US and Russian presidents share an admirer in the form of the prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
“Putin is trying to derail the momentum toward greater pressure on Russia,” said Dan Fried, a former US state department official. “We’ll see what happens tomorrow [on Friday, with Zelenskyy due to meet Trump] but the chances of moving toward a ceasefire by pushing Russia to get serious seem to have diminished.” Trump had recently been hardening his language towards Russia until Thursday’s call with Putin which the Kremlin described as “extremely frank and trustful”.
