The US president, Donald Trump, was expected to meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the Hungarian capital of Budapest in coming weeks for more talks on ending the war in Ukraine.
However, the summit appears to have been cancelled following a call between the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. The White House gave no reason for the cancellation but some reports suggest the two country’s positions on Ukraine were seen as too far apart to make a face-to-face meeting worthwhile.
While the summit may yet be revived, scepticism that any progress will be made towards peace is probably the right response. Putin’s own actions have shown how little stock he places in summits and negotiations.
Within hours of his August meeting with Trump in Alaska, for example, Russia launched a barrage of strikes against Ukraine. Russian forces staged another series of drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities a few days later.
If the Budapest summit were to go ahead, above all it would be a boon for Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has long been Putin’s strongest ally in the EU. His invitation to Putin risks causing further damage to the international rules-based order and the already strained relationship between Hungary and Ukraine.
A meeting in Budapest would also pose a threat to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which aims to place checks on the power of national leaders by prosecuting them for grave crimes. The ICC issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest in 2023 for his alleged involvement in the war crime of forcibly deporting children from Ukraine to Russia.
Hungary’s government has announced its intention to withdraw from the ICC treaty. This decision came shortly after it decided to flout an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in April 2025. But as Hungary has not yet completed this process, it remains obliged to detain the Russian leader.
In response to a question from the New York Times about Putin’s visit to Hungary, the ICC’s public affairs office reinforced the legal obligation of its member states to enforce arrest warrants. It added that in the “case of noncooperation, the court may make a finding” and alert an oversight group to take action.
But the ICC is regularly criticised for being powerless to effect real justice, and the Hungarian government’s invitation to Putin and refusal to detain him in Budapest will only weaken its standing further.
Worsening strained relations
A Budapest summit would also be a death knell for diplomacy between Hungary and Ukraine. Relations between the two neighbouring countries have been suffering for years due to Orbán’s attempts to cultivate stronger ties with Russia.
Most of the western world sought to isolate Russia diplomatically after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, Orbán flew to China to meet with Putin in 2023 and his foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, has subsequently been sent on repeated missions to Moscow.
Hungary’s real value for Putin lies in shaping EU foreign policy. And, at every step, Orbán has used Hungary’s veto power to block or delay the EU’s efforts to support Ukraine and tighten the screws on Russia’s economy. Despite efforts by the EU to reduce the bloc’s reliance on Russian energy, Orbán continues to import Russian natural gas.
Budapest has also repeatedly accused Kyiv of discriminating against western Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarian minority. The dispute centres around Ukraine’s language laws, which require at least 70% of education above fifth grade to be conducted in Ukrainian.
Hungary has used this to cast aspersions on the international reputation of Ukraine as a democracy that fosters pluralism, and has blocked Ukraine’s EU accession talks. EU accession requires candidate countries to provide human rights and protection guarantees for national minorities.
As I learned while reporting in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod in June, minority community leaders themselves point out that they have had success negotiating directly with Kyiv.
Ukraine has also introduced an action plan to protect the rights of minorities. This plan is based on recommendations from national minority organisations, the European Commission and the Council of Europe. But Orbán, intent on maintaining his leverage over Ukraine, has ignored this progress.
Bilateral relations were dealt another blow in May 2025 when Ukrainian authorities arrested two people, claiming they were collecting sensitive information about air-defence systems. Ukraine’s security service said the spy ring was run by a “staff officer of Hungarian military intelligence”, an allegation Hungary denies.
Several months later, after Russia sent drones into Nato airspace over Poland and Romania, Hungary targeted Ukraine with a similar manoeuvre. It sent several of its own drones across the border into Ukraine’s Zakarpattia region, prompting an angry demand from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for an explanation.
A total breakdown in Hungarian-Ukrainian relations now could cut direct communication between the two countries entirely, just when they might be needed to avoid a conflict resulting from Hungary’s continuous provocations.
Weathering the fallout
Orbán’s fiercest critics have long called for the EU to take action against Hungary, beyond what the bloc has already done by withholding funds from Budapest for consistently flouting EU standards and democratic principles.
But European policymakers should not focus only on punishments. They could give Zelensky a major geopolitical win by, for example, announcing that Ukraine has met a major accession benchmark.
If this were a benchmark concerning protection for national minorities, it would have the additional benefit of undermining one of Hungary’s major claims against Ukraine’s integration efforts.
Regardless of the specifics, pushing ahead swiftly with Ukraine’s EU accession would be a bold and constructive reply to Trump and Orbán’s attempts at rapprochement with Putin.
This article has been updated to include the cancellation of the summit.
Marc Roscoe Loustau does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
