Last week the White House had announced that a meeting between the two leaders would take place in the Hungarian capital of Budapest to talk about resolving the war in Ukraine. The AP reports that the sit down has now been put on hold following a call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
European leaders, including Ukraine, are accusing Russia of stalling the diplomatic talks to end their invasion of Ukraine. They also opposed Kyiv, the capitol of Ukraine, from surrendering any land that was captured by Russie in exchange for peace.
Bob Maginnis is a military strategist and author of more than a dozen books on national defense. He says that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban would be a good choice to host such a meeting.
"Orban has a working relationship with both Trump and Putin. It makes for a fairly natural location hosted by Orban, and he's also a neighbor of Ukraine, so he has an investment here."
Maginnis says that the EU and NATO see that they may be usurped by Orban.
"Clearly, Putin's not going to come back to the United States. Trump's not going to go to Russia now that Orban has cultivated the opportunity to host the meeting and perhaps find some sort of outcome that is amenable to all the parties,” says Maginnis. “This puts Orban in more of an enviable position in terms of what the Europeans think about ongoing conflicts, and given his conservative viewpoints, that doesn't sit well in Brussels."
Maginnis says that Hungry is almost neutral ground because Orban is friendly with both Trump and Putin, so he believes it will host a future meeting.
