Trump's Plan For A Second Meeting With Putin Undercuts Ukraine Push

Trump's call with Putin on Thursday preempted a meeting he's set to have on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

17 Oct 2025, 06:26 · NDTV

President Donald Trump has his sights once again on ending the Ukraine conflict, announcing another meeting with Russian Vladimir Putin after a first summit in Alaska failed to yield progress.

The president framed the decision, announced after he spoke with Putin for more than two hours Thursday, as a plan to bring peace at last to a conflict that he once claimed he'd solve within a day. But it also deflates any pressure that had been building on Putin in recent weeks as Trump vented frustration with the Russian leader's foot-dragging to end the war.

Trump's call with Putin also preempted a meeting he's set to have on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump had adopted an increasingly warmer tone toward Zelensky in recent weeks as he cooled on Putin - a stark change from his more frigid stance toward the Ukrainian leader earlier in his administration, including a public dressing down in the Oval Office earlier this year.

Even more worrying for Zelensky, Trump equivocated on Thursday about both the possibility of sending long-range Tomahawk missiles as well as a Senate push for punishing sanctions against Russia.

"We need Tomahawks for the United States of America, too," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "So I don't know what we can do about that." Of sanctions, he said the Republican push for tough new measures "may not be perfect timing, but it could happen in a week or two."

Both Ukraine and Russia have sought to take advantage of Trump's momentum after the Gaza summit that halted fighting between Hamas and Israel - though to opposite ends. Zelensky believes Trump's growing frustration with Putin could lead him to apply the pressure the White House has so far resisted. He'll renew pleas for air defense and assistance in sourcing new energy supplies along with the coveted Tomahawks.

But Trump has yet to sign off on issuing those to Ukraine, and Putin in his call with Trump warned the US president doing so "would cause significant damage to relations between our countries, not to mention the prospects for a peaceful settlement," according to a readout by the Kremlin.

Sergey Radchenko, a Cold War historian and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said it was "almost foolhardy" for Trump to agree to another meeting given that the Alaska summit in August produced no agreement despite all the fanfare. What's needed, he said, was to combine pressure with communication.

"I'm seeing a lot of efforts at dialogue," Radchenko said. "I'm not yet seeing maximum pressure."

Instead the US president appears to be relying on carrots to lure Putin to the table. Trump noted the two leaders spoke extensively about the prospects for trade after the war ends. According to the Kremlin, Trump stressed the economic opportunities would be "colossal."

With the plans for lower-level dialogue and an eventual leaders' summit, "Putin is essentially buying time, delaying the delivery of much-needed United States weapons to Ukraine and the implementation of the energy sanctions that Trump has promised," according to Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The venue of Trump's planned summit with Putin - Budapest - is also likely to be viewed with skepticism from European allies as an attempt by the Russian leader to drive a wedge between the US and Europe. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been the target of fierce criticism from its European Union and NATO allies for maintaining close ties with Russia, even after Putin invaded Ukraine. This has included speaking out against EU sanctions on Moscow, barring the delivery of weapons to Ukraine and locking Hungary into a long-term gas contract with Russia.

Trump has put the onus on Europe to cut off all energy supplies from Russia as a precondition for the US to take tough measures on Russia. But after the European Union drastically cut purchases of Russian oil and gas since the onset of its war on Ukraine, Hungary has been one of the few countries in the bloc to continue to rely on Russian imports.

Despite the European tensions, Trump has long seen Orban as a close ally on the world stage, part of a small cohort of MAGA-allied foreign leaders. As such, the American president may see Budapest as friendly territory for a summit with his Russian counterpart.

The Hungarian leader said in a post on social media platform X that preparations for the "USA-Russia peace summit" were underway, adding that "Hungary is the island of PEACE!"

For Trump, holding a second Putin summit carries considerable risk if there's no plan by the White House to simultaneously impose costs on Russia, according to Celeste Wallander, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a top Pentagon official in charge of Russia and Europe during the Biden administration.

If the summit ends with no acceptable agreement, it would once again "allow Putin to use the opportunity to send a message to the world that he's kind of in control of the narrative," she said.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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