This opinion was voiced on Espreso TV by politician Oleh Rybachuk, head of the NGO Center for Joint Action and former Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration (2005).“Budapest and the Budapest Memorandum have special historical meaning for Ukrainians. My first reaction to Putin’s meeting in Budapest was that Trump is acting like Putin once did when he came to Kyiv and stood next to Yanukovych to help him win the election. The parallels are striking — Orbán is facing a difficult domestic situation, and the EU has repeatedly signaled it’s tired of tolerating him. Hungary’s prime minister now faces serious problems ahead of next spring’s elections,” Rybachuk noted.He added that both the U.S. and Russia have already formed teams to prepare the meeting, involving top-level experts. Planned contacts between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated that preparations for a Trump-Putin summit were indeed under way.“But you can’t just meet without groundwork. Trump is still getting flak from the American press over Alaska and has to keep insisting that the meeting was productive. Yet everything he claimed was later denied by the Kremlin. A similar situation is unfolding now — after his phone call with Putin, Trump said they agreed to stop hostilities along the contact line, start negotiations, and then see what happens next. But that statement was promptly denied by Peskov and then by Lavrov. Russian propagandists are already saying no such agreement was reached. There’s talk that a meeting between Rubio and Lavrov could take place around October 30 — or perhaps not at all,” the politician commented.According to Rybachuk, it’s difficult to predict whether the meeting will actually happen, but the chances it won’t are quite high. Still, Putin understands that Trump needs a final “photo op” showing him sitting across from the Russian leader.“Trump’s strategy — the same one where he claimed to have ‘ended 101 wars in his first 101 days’ — is to get both sides to at least mumble some agreement to cease hostilities. We can see that in Gaza right now: Trump wants both sides to agree to a ceasefire and sign an accord amid fanfare. But when it comes to Ukraine, it’s much harder. Zelenskyy has reiterated that Ukraine won’t give anything to the aggressor. Ukraine and several European leaders warmly welcomed Trump’s initiative to stop fighting along the front line, but Russia has shown no enthusiasm. And that’s where we stand now,” Rybachuk concluded.On October 16, U.S. President Donald Trump held a phone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, announcing that they had agreed to meet in Budapest.Later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was ready to take part in the Trump-Putin meeting in any format that could bring results.