European leaders are trying to secure a seat at the negotiating table between Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump after their previous meeting undermined efforts to maintain pressure on Russia.

Source: Bloomberg, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Bloomberg quoted four European officials who expressed disquiet at the announcement of the Trump-Putin summit in Budapest.

They said Putin has intervened just as relations with Trump were beginning to shift in Ukraine's favour.

The officials stressed that the Russian leader is stalling for time and attempting to derail the talks scheduled for Friday 17 October between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House.

Two of Bloomberg's sources noted that EU leaders should take a firm stance on Russia and find ways to counter Putin's influence over Trump during the summit.

One of them suggested that Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who played a key role in talks at the White House following the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska in August, should somehow be present at the meeting in Hungary.

At this stage, it is not yet known whether Trump will invite Zelenskyy to join the negotiations in Budapest as part of a trilateral summit.

A senior EU official said he hopes that Trump will remember how, after the Alaska summit, Putin acted in direct contradiction to what the US president had hoped for.

Background:

• Trump spoke with Putin on 16 October for the first time in nearly two months. Following the conversation, he announced plans for a meeting in Budapest, which would mark Putin's first appearance in an EU capital since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Such a visit would require Russian aircraft to cross the airspace of other EU member states.
• After the call, Trump said Putin did not like the idea of the US providing Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles and added that he believed that now "it may not be perfect timing" to impose secondary sanctions aimed at reducing Russia's energy revenues.

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