The US and Russian leaders have agreed to meet in person in Hungary soon<\/p>\n
Vladimir Zelensky was \u201csurprised\u201d\u00a0upon landing in\u00a0Washington\u00a0that US President Donald Trump had\u00a0held a substantive phone call with\u00a0his Russian counterpart,\u00a0Vladimir Putin, Axios has reported.
\nDuring the two-hour-30-minute call, reportedly proposed by Moscow, Putin agreed to meet Trump in Hungary within weeks. This\u00a0call, as well as the\u00a0location of the proposed summit \u2013 described by Axios as \u201cthe least Ukraine-friendly country in the European Union\u201d \u2013 reportedly caught Zelensky\u2019s team off guard.
\nTrump characterized his conversation with Putin as \u201cvery productive\u201d\u00a0while\u00a0the Russian president’s\u00a0foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, described it as\u00a0\u201cvery substantive and at the same time extremely frank.\u201d\u00a0
\nHungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban \u2013 a vocal critic of the Western approach to the Ukraine conflict and of Zelensky\u2019s use of what he branded \u201cmoral blackmail\u201d to secure military aid for Ukraine \u2013 also welcomed the call.<\/p>\n
READ MORE: Preparations for Putin-Trump summit in \u2018full swing\u2019 \u2013 Hungarian FM<\/p>\n
Zelensky is set to meet Trump on Friday to discuss his request for Tomahawk cruise missiles that would allow him directly target Moscow, a threat Russia has said would represent a significant escalation of the conflict.
\nMedia reports have broadly interpreted Trump\u2019s new diplomatic engagement with Putin as an indication that Kiev will not receive the Tomahawks. Putin, Trump said,\u00a0\u201cdidn\u2019t like the idea\u201d of Ukraine acquiring the nuclear-capable weapons.
\nMoscow has repeatedly stated that it won\u2019t yield to foreign pressure and will achieve its goals in the Ukraine conflict, either diplomatically or militarily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US and Russian leaders have agreed to meet in person in Hungary soon Vladimir Zelensky was \u201csurprised\u201d\u00a0upon landing in\u00a0Washington\u00a0that US President Donald Trump had\u00a0held a substantive phone call with\u00a0his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t