EU officials say Finnish leader should join Trump-Putin summit in Budapest

European leaders are once again rushing to secure a place at the negotiating table after Vladimir Putin’s latest contact with US President Donald Trump appeared to undermine their coordinated push to increase pressure on Moscow over its ongoing war in Ukraine.

Trump announced plans to hold a second summit with Putin — this time in Budapest — following what the White House described as lengthy phone talks between the two leaders on October 16.

The announcement came just ahead of Trump’s scheduled meeting in Washington on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

According to four European officials who spoke to Bloomberg, Putin’s renewed engagement came precisely as diplomatic momentum had begun to shift in Ukraine’s favour with Trump’s administration. They voiced concern that the Kremlin was seeking to buy time and derail Zelenskyy’s White House negotiations, describing the move as a calculated effort to weaken Kyiv’s position. The officials requested anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters.

Two of the officials emphasised that European Union leaders must remain unified and develop strategies to counter Putin’s influence over Trump during the planned Budapest meeting. One official even proposed that Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who played a prominent role in White House consultations after Trump’s August summit with Putin in Alaska, should somehow be present at the upcoming talks in Hungary.

“The summit definitely arrests the current tilt of Washington in getting more frustrated about Russia and getting some more pressure on Russia,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin. “That’s bad news for Ukraine.”

It remains unclear whether Zelenskyy will be invited to participate in what could become a three-way summit in Budapest. The choice of venue has already unsettled many European leaders, who fear the talks could once again hand Moscow an image of legitimacy and advantage.

During the August Alaska summit, Trump extended a warm welcome to Putin, offering the Russian leader a symbolic diplomatic victory after years of isolation over the war in Ukraine. However, the meeting failed to deliver on Trump’s stated goal of securing a ceasefire. Putin made no concessions and, in a rare breach of protocol, took the first turn addressing reporters alongside Trump, a role usually reserved for the host. Soon after, Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine.

Following that meeting, Zelenskyy and several top European leaders hurried to Washington, seeking to persuade Trump to reaffirm US support for Ukraine. Their discussions produced an agreement to include Ukraine in prospective Western security guarantees and to defer negotiations on possible territorial arrangements with Russia until later stages of the peace process.

One senior EU official told Bloomberg he hoped Trump would recall that, following the Alaska summit, Putin had done the exact opposite of what the US president had anticipated.

Now, bolstered by his success in mediating a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Trump appears to have shifted his focus back to Russia’s war in Ukraine — a conflict he famously vowed during his election campaign to end “within a day” of returning to office.

By Tamilla Hasanova