The leaders of the US and Russia discussed tensions in Europe in their first conversation since the Alaska summit in August<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, spoke over the phone on Thursday amid renewed tensions over potential deliveries of American Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine and stalled peace talks.
\nTrump described the conversation as \u201cvery productive\u201d and announced plans for a summit with Putin in Hungary\u2019s capital, Budapest.
\nPutin\u2019s top foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, later released a statement summarizing the phone call.
\n\u2018Frank\u2019 conversation
\nThe conversation, which lasted nearly two and a half hours, was \u201cvery substantive and at the same time extremely frank,\u201d Ushakov said. He added that Putin had congratulated Trump on his \u201csuccessful\u201d efforts to mediate a ceasefire in Gaza.
\nUkraine in the spotlight
\nPutin emphasized that Moscow seeks \u201ca peaceful political-diplomatic resolution\u201d of the Ukraine conflict. At the same time, he noted that Russian troops hold the\u00a0\u201cstrategic initiative\u201d across all sections of the front line, according to Ushakov, and that Moscow is \u201cresponding appropriately\u201d to Ukrainian strikes on civilian targets.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
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Tomahawks would undermine chances for peace
\nAlthough the potential delivery of Tomahawks would \u201cnot change the situation on the battlefield,\u201d it would \u201cseverely undermine the prospects of a peaceful settlement,\u201d as well as bilateral US-Russia relations, Putin said, according to Ushakov. The cruise missiles have a range of up to 2,500km (1,550 miles) and could reach Moscow and other cities deep inside Russia.
\nNext face-to-face meeting
\nUshakov said the sides would immediately begin arranging the next Putin-Trump summit, with Budapest as a possible location. Preparations would include a phone call between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
\nHungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban wrote on X on Thursday that he had also spoken to Trump and that preparations for the summit were underway.
\nAlthough the rare in-person Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska in August did not produce major breakthroughs, the leaders at the time described it as an important step toward peace between Russia and Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The leaders of the US and Russia discussed tensions in Europe in their first conversation since the Alaska summit in August Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20607,"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-20606","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