The American president once again took the bait of Vladimir Putin’s promises—like Winnie the Pooh drawn to a pot of honey—while his irritation and frustration landed squarely on Kyiv.
Less than a week after plans for a Trump-Putin summit in Budapest were announced, the Kremlin abruptly changed course.
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke by phone with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Afterward, Lavrov made clear that Moscow’s objectives in Ukraine remained unchanged, insisting that any ceasefire must be preceded by political arrangements securing those aims.
Soon after, the White House suspended preparations for the Budapest summit, with Trump saying he did not want "to have a wasted meeting."
The timeline matters because it reveals the pattern.
In recent weeks, Trump had grown increasingly impatient with Russia’s inflexibility. His tone toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had softened, and he began suggesting that Ukraine could still win the war and reclaim occupied territories.
There were even ambiguous hints that the United States might provide Tomahawk cruise missiles—capable of striking Moscow, St. Petersburg and key Russian energy and defence sites.
The issue reportedly dominated two phone calls between Trump and Zelensky on October 11 and 13, which led to plans for an in-person meeting at the White House on October 17.
Expectations soared, and the practical hurdles to such a move—the lack of ground-based launchers and limited missile stockpiles—were quickly brushed aside.
Then came Putin’s countermove.
On Thursday, as Zelensky was flying to Washington, the Russian leader phoned Trump. Their two-and-a-half-hour conversation completely shifted the dynamic.
It remains unclear what blend of flattery or promises Putin used to pull Trump back into the Kremlin’s narrative.
According to reports, including in The Financial Times, Trump later lashed out during a closed-door lunch with Zelensky—cursing, warning that Russia could “wipe Ukraine off the map,” and urging Kyiv to accept Moscow’s terms.
By the time the public portion of the meeting began, the Tomahawk proposal was effectively dead.
When Moscow repeated its demands on October 21, Trump—frustrated and disillusioned—declared that another talk with Putin would be a waste of time.
For the Kremlin, it was mission accomplished.
Moscow hadn’t yielded an inch, but it had bought time, deepened tensions between Washington and Kyiv, and unnerved Europe.
Most importantly, it had once again soured Trump on the idea of pursuing peace, portraying the war as a distant, messy conflict irrelevant to American interests.
That remains Russia’s ultimate goal: to convince Trump that Ukraine—and Europe’s broader security problems—aren’t worth US attention, paving the way for a political and possibly military retreat from the continent.
Still, Putin may have won a round, not the match. More rounds will follow, and Kyiv could yet find a way to turn the tables.
For now, one immediate casualty of the failed Budapest summit is Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who had hoped to use the event—much as Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko did in 2014 and 2015—to cast himself as an indispensable peace broker ahead of next spring’s elections, the outcome of which remains far from certain.
Tadeusz Iwański
Tadeusz Iwański
The author is head of the Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova department at the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW). From 2006 to 2011, he worked at Polskie Radio dla Zagranicy, the Polish public broadcaster's international service.