The failure with Budapest showed exactly how to get Putin to end the war, – WP

Trump should stop playing diplomacy with Putin, say observers / collage UNIAN, photo REUTERSThe story of the Putin-Trump summit in Budapest, which ended before it even started, gives a clear understanding of how exactly the US president should act in order to stop the war in Ukraine – it is necessary to put hard pressure on the Kremlin. This is stated in the editorial articles of The Washington Post (WP).

Journalists note that the plans for the summit in Hungary collapsed in less than a week. It only took one phone conversation between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to convince the Americans that the Russians had not given up their intentions to destroy Ukraine as a state.

A similar story was with Alaska, reminds the editors of WP. At that time, the Americans also thought that the Russians were ready to negotiate, but later it became clear that this was not the case. And when the Americans finally realized this, they began to help the Ukrainian campaign of attacks on Russian refineries with intelligence.

However, the summit in Budapest failed before it started, because everything became clear to the Americans much faster. When Trump began to consider the possibility of sending Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, Moscow publicly spoke about the unacceptability of this step. In the end, everything culminated in a Kremlin-initiated telephone conversation between Putin and Trump, as a result of which the US president immediately removed Tomahawks from the agenda in order to “give diplomacy a chance.” However, less than a week passed, when diplomacy failed.

According to WP, this situation was aptly described by the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi. He noted that Russia “became less interested in diplomacy” after the Tomahawks became less likely. “This is a signal that this very issue — the issue of long-range capabilities — can be an irreplaceable key to peace. The more long-range capabilities of Ukraine, the greater is Russia’s willingness to end the war,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday evening in his daily address to Ukrainians.

American journalists agree with this: the pressure on Russia is working. In their opinion, Republicans in Congress should resuscitate the hellish sanctions bill, which they have already postponed several times, and Trump should put the Tomahawks back on the agenda.

“Russia’s summer offensive has clearly failed. Every month the casualties are increasing. At some point, this could lead to instability at home for Putin. Shake the cage with Russia a little more and it could bring Putin to his senses,” summarizes The Washington Post.

The Budapest summit of Putin and Trump: the latest newsAs UNIAN wrote, the probability of a new meeting between Putin and Trump decreased sharply after the telephone conversation between the foreign ministers of the two countries. Lavrov and Rubio were scheduled to meet first in Budapest, outline a general plan of what the heads of state could discuss later during their meeting. But it turned out that Russia is not ready for any concessions, so even a preparatory meeting of the heads of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs makes no sense.

The head of the “international” committee of the Verkhovna Rada, Oleksandr Merezhko, is convinced that after the failed summit in Alaska, Trump is already afraid to meet Putin. If the new meeting does not bring peace closer, it will again hit the reputation of the US president hard. And he is very sensitive to such blows, so he will not agree to a new meeting until he is convinced that it will bring visible progress.

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