Their foreign ministers had a telephone conversation today during which they discussed the upcoming summit in Budapest and the next steps for settling the war in .
According to the announcement of the State Department, the American Secretary of State spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov about , after the telephone conversation that the presidents of the two countries, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, had last week.
Rubio emphasized “the importance of the upcoming engagements as an opportunity” for the two countries to work together “to advance a sustainable solution” to the war, State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.
Moscow, for its part, described as “constructive” the discussion held by the two ministers who are in charge of preparing the summit. “There was a constructive discussion on possible concrete steps to implement what was agreed in the October 16 telephone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump,” the Foreign Ministry said in a terse statement, without elaborating.
The two presidents plan to meet in the Hungarian capital at their second summit this year to find a solution to the Ukraine war. Russia says it wants to discuss a possible peaceful solution as well as ways to improve bilateral relations.
Trump’s proposal to partition the Donbass
would be to “cut off” the Donbas region in a way that would leave most of it under Russian control, after he reportedly pushed Volodymyr Zelensky in that direction at the White House meeting.
“Let’s keep it cut the way it is,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday. “It’s already cut now,” he added, saying they can “leave it as it is right now.”
“They can negotiate something later,” he said. “For now, both sides need to stop on the battle line — go home, stop fighting, stop killing people.”
Trump: Ukraine can still win the war with Russia
At the same time, the American president, Donald Trump, said that Ukraine could win the war, although “I don’t think it will”, a few days after the meeting he had at the White House with Volodymyr Zelensky and ahead of the planned summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Budapest.
“They could still beat him. I don’t think they will, but they could still beat him,” Trump specifically told reporters at the White House. As he said, war is a strange thing and anything can happen.
At the same time, the US president noted that he expects to reach a fair trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping and even plans to speed up the delivery of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, signaling both a willingness to ease tensions with Beijing and a push to strengthen defense ties with a key Indo-Pacific ally.
