Budapest Gambit: Europe’s Trump Card on Russia and Ukraine
After Putin’s phone call and Zelenskyy’s visit, Ukraine’s European allies need to break Donald Trump’s Russia fixation.
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Victory requires understanding the board. For Ukraine, that means leveling an uneven playing field. For three-and-a-half years, Ukraine has had to overcome a numerical deficit against the much larger Russian military. Since Donald Trump returned to office, the Ukrainians have also needed to conquer a diplomatic disadvantage.
Today’s meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed that no matter who speaks to the US president last, Vladimir Putin always gets the final word. Even though this most recent US-Ukraine summit looked chummy on the surface, Trump’s focus was clearly still on his Thursday call with the Russian dictator.
There’s no way around it: Putin takes precedence over Zelenskyy in Trump’s mind. No grinning photo ops are going to change that. But this handicap doesn’t mean Ukraine has to lose. Kyiv and its allies still have options.
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First, let’s consider the events of the past 24 hours.
On Thursday, Trump took a phone call with Putin. Trump claims the Russian leader congratulated him on “the Great Accomplishment of Peace in the Middle East.” A bit of an oversell, but I have no doubt that Putin showered him with praise for the Gaza ceasefire. The old KGB hand remembers his training in psychological manipulation well.
The big takeaway from that call was Putin’s proposal of a summit with Zelenskyy, Trump, and Hungarian petite-despot Viktor Orban in Budapest. Now, Hungary is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Russia, about as neutral a territory as a toilet stall in the Kremlin. And at least in the bathroom, Zelenskyy might have a chance at catching Putin with his pants down.
Zelenskyy came to the White House today seeking Tomahawk missiles. He didn’t have to weather a meltdown of the kind Trump and JD Vance threw back in February, but he didn’t get his missiles either. Trump’s focus was, predictably, with Putin in Budapest.
The offer of a summit in the Hungarian capital is clearly a trap. Zelenskyy would find himself outnumbered three-to-one.
Here is the thing: That summit doesn’t have to happen.
Hungary is landlocked. It is impossible to get into its airspace without passing through a European Union member. Putin would need to fly over those countries to reach his Danube destination. The EU (and the United States) maintains a ban on Russian air traffic as a result of Moscow’s criminal war in Ukraine.
It would only take one EU nation to insist upon enforcing the ban to throw the whole Budapest bash off. And it is critical that the union’s member states step up.
Trump’s plan for a meeting with Putin in Budapest is an affront to European sovereignty. It would show that an American president can, by diktat, overrule European decisions like the Russian flight ban. The Ukrainians and their supporters need to remind their friends in the EU of this.
The Trump administration had to make a special exception to America’s flight ban in order to facilitate the embarrassment that was this summer’s Alaska summit. But that shame rests with America, and the Europeans don’t need to do the same.
There’s a fleeting chance that a gutsy stand like this might even play well with Trump. The American president doesn’t respect much of anything, but he does seem to appreciate strength.
Part of Trump’s contempt for America’s European allies stems from his understanding—not entirely unfounded—that the continent is weak on Russia, dependent upon Washington, and unable to stand on its own.
Yes, even Putin-friendly Trump has called out the Europeans for being weak on Russia. Consider this comment by the president in 2018.
They want to protect against Russia and yet they pay billions of dollars to Russia, and we’re the schmucks paying for the whole thing.
He wasn’t wrong.
Trump puts Putin first because in his overly-simplistic worldview, Russia is strong and defiant, and Europe is weak and compliant. The Europeans have a chance to prove him wrong—and help Ukraine in the process.
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Great analysis. I continue to believe Trump sees himself as part of a new troika with Putin, Xi, and himself as the leaders. He is, of course, out of his league with those guys and will only lead us down a path to diminished influence. He sees everything as a transactional money play while the other two actually have a long term geopolitical gameplan. It is sad to see the American house burn down and not be able to much to stop it.
I would recommend Mr Zelinsky not ingest anything during his time there and wear at leat flesh tone surgical gloves. No one will have his back. He's a remarkably brave man and worth every penny the Ukrainians are.paying him.