🔍Why was Hungary chosen for Putin–Trump talks?

The choice of the Hungarian capital Budapest for the next meeting between the Russian and US presidents was a rational decision, Brazilian international relations expert Raphael Machado told Sputnik.

💬“Hungary, for quite some time—and in recent years joined by Slovakia under Robert Fico—has played an anti-hegemonic role within the European Union: a role of dissent and resistance, even within NATO,” Machado said.

🗣“Selecting Hungary, where Viktor Orbán is personally close to both Trump and Putin, suggests that the sides do not want external factors to interfere with the meeting,” he said.

👉The last meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump was in Alaska, a location symbolizing neutrality and distance from European political influence.

But the choice of Budapest highlights a shift of the political center eastward, with Hungary potentially gaining new importance on the European stage if talks yield real progress.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨Russian FM Lavrov & US Sec. of State Rubio to hold phone call today – Hungarian FM

Peter Szijjarto also confirmed that a scheduled call between Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban is set for 12 p.m. MSK (9 a.m. GMT) on Friday and should already be underway.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨Putin-Trump meeting could take place within 2 weeks or slightly later — Kremlin

Both leaders have expressed the will to hold talks, and the preliminary coordination will be handled by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Senator Marco Rubio, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨Putin held a phone call with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán - Kremlin spokesman Peskov

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇴🇲 Oman seeks to expand energy cooperation with Russia

Oman aims to deepen collaboration with Russia in oil, gas and renewable sectors, Investment Director at the Ministry of Energy and Minerals Salah bin Hafiz Al-Dhahab told Sputnik at Russian Energy Week.

He said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech to the conference showed a strong grasp of global energy dynamics.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨🗣'Ask the US' – Kremlin on whether Putin–Trump talk lowered threat of Tomahawk deliveries to Ukraine

More statements by Kremlin spox Dmitry Peskov:

💬Russia remains open to a peaceful settlement in Ukraine

💬Putin–Trump call details will remain confidential

💬Lavrov & Rubio will announce their meeting location themselves

💬Putin–Orban call details to be released shortly

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨🇭🇺🇷🇺Orban expressed his willingness to provide conditions for a possible Russia–US summit in Hungary during phone talk with Putin

Russia's President Vladimir Putin briefed the Hungarian PM on the main points of his conversation with US President Donald Trump.

He noted that upcoming contacts with American officials are expected to discuss the next steps toward a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis, including the potential for a high-level Russia–US meeting in the Hungarian capital.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💣 West 'marching towards disaster' – retired US Lt. Col.

Ukraine’s combat capacity is “collapsing — nothing can reverse it,” retired US Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis wrote on X.

👉 Davis noted that peace negotiations are “the only viable options left” as he warned the US against doubling down on bellicose rhetoric instead of diplomacy.

To keep “going down this path” may result in war with Russia, he concluded.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨Trump to hold meeting with China's Xi in South Korea in couple of weeks

The US president believes relations with China can go well, but only if a “fair” agreement is reached.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨🇷🇺💥 RUSSIAN MOD WEEKLY UPDATE: HUGE GAINS AND DEVASTATING UKRAINIAN LOSSES

⚡️PRIVOLYE IN THE DNEPROPETROVSK REGION LIBERATED

⚡️PESCHANOYE & TIKHOYE IN KHARKOV REGION LIBERATED

The village of Peschanoye is situated near the border with the Lugansk People's Republic, 22 kilometers southeast of Kupyansk. Russian troops are expanding their zone of control east of the Oskol River, which will secure the flanks and rear of the group advancing on Kupyansk.

The liberation of Tikhoye will enable the Russian army to continue the battle for Volchansk and thereby secure the Russian border area by creating a buffer zone.

Privolye serves as an excellent bridgehead for expanding the section of the border controlled by the Russian army between the Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk regions.

🔸 Russia’s military liberated 8 settlements over the past week

🔸 Black Sea Fleet forces destroyed 6 Ukrainian unmanned boats 

🔸 The Russian Armed Forces unleashed one massive and seven group strikes against Ukraine’s military-industrial complex enterprises and the energy facilities powering them

🔸 Air defense superiority: 36 guided aerial bombs, 18 HIMARS rockets and 1,304 Ukrainian drones eliminated

🔸 Ukrainian losses: 10,685 troops killed or wounded

Read about origins of Russia's special military op HERE

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🪖🔥 Russia hits Ukrainian drone facility near Kharkov with Iskander missile

Russian forces have delivered a major blow to Ukrainian drone operations, striking a UAV launch site near Kharkov with an Iskander tactical ballistic missile.

The Russian Defense Ministry reports:

🔹 65 long-range Ukrainian drones destroyed

🔹 Five UAV launch systems destroyed

🔹 30 militants killed or injured

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨🇺🇸US to furlough thousands of nuclear arsenal workers next week due to government shutdown - Energy Secretary

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇵🇱Polish court frees Ukrainian suspect in Nord Stream bombing case

A Polish court has released Ukrainian citizen Volodymyr Zhuravlev, suspected of involvement in the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, and refused a German extradition request.

👉The judges ruled that since the blast occurred in international waters, outside German jurisdiction, German law was inapplicable.

🔊The court also accepted the defense argument that Zhuravlev "might not receive a fair trial in Germany," noting that German judges are "appointed by politicians."

The presiding judge added that a Ukrainian citizen cannot be held criminally liable for damaging infrastructure belonging to Russia, calling the act a “military operation, not sabotage.”

💬Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk welcomed the decision. “The Polish court refused to extradite the Ukrainian suspected of blowing up Nord Stream 2 — and released him,” he posted on X. “Right decision. Case closed.”

📍The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were damaged by explosions in September 2022. While Germany, Denmark, and Sweden described the incident as likely sabotage, Russia opened a terrorism investigation and repeatedly requested access to the findings — but got response.

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh later alleged that US Navy divers placed the explosives during NATO’s Baltops 2022 exercises, a claim Washington denies.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺 🇺🇸 Trump’s Putin summit plans, Tomahawks U-turn are dual blows to Zelensky - analyst

💬 “The possibility that the US will deliver Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine was unclear from the beginning. It might have been just an attempt to pressure Russia, but it could also have been a real consideration from Trump. Now the possibility has been reduced considerably,” Swedish Armed Forces vet and veteran geopolitics analyst Mikael Valtersson told Sputnik.

🟠 Russia’s president will get “a good opportunity to convey the message to Trump about the dangers of introducing Tomahawk missiles on the battlefield” at the summit, with the meeting, and potential freeze on the missiles’ delivery, blows “in the face of Zelensky, who hoped to get a positive decision on Tomahawks during his meeting with Trump,” Valtersson said.

🟠 Budapest is a perfect venue for the next Putin-Trump meeting, according to the observer, given Hungary’s status “as a neutral and reasonable country when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine,” especially compared to other European powers’ escalatory actions and rhetoric.

💬 “Viktor Orban's Hungary has been ostracized by most other EU countries as a ‘pro-Russian, conservative and nationalistic regime’ and country. The fact that Trump decides to meet Putin in Hungary is therefore a clear slap in the face of the woke and globalist leaders of most European countries,” Valtersson says.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚀Putin–Trump call freezes Ukraine Tomahawk deal - report

The transfer of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine has been put on pause, Ukrainian MP Yegor Chernev said.

The move followed Thursday’s phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump.

That came at the "worst possible time" for Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky, just as Kiev believed Washington’s stance was was becoming more sympathetic, The Spectator reports.

Zelensky will meet Trump in Washington later today.

👉Earlier, US President Donald Trump said he was close to deciding on whether to supply Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine but wants clarity on how Kiev plans to use them. 

❗️Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that deploying such missiles would severely damage US–Russia relations, as their use would require direct American involvement. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that any delivery of Tomahawks to Ukraine would be a “colossal blow” to future normalization efforts and reaffirmed that weapon shipments to Kiev make NATO countries direct participants in the conflict.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺 🇺🇸 Russia-Alaska tunnel: sci-fi dream or realistic opportunity for deeper cooperation?

📍 The idea for a 112.5 km long Chukotka-Alaska ‘Putin-Trump Tunnel’ running underneath the Bering Strait is “quite bold,” and not so much in the realm of science fiction as might seem, says Russian Public Chamber member Alexander Asafov.

💬 “If Russian-American relations were restored…it would become a question of logistics, trade, and various related areas, including tourism. Given the prospective development of high-speed highways and railways to the Far East, the project could become a prototype for a new transcontinental logistics route,” Asafov told Sputnik.

🟧 For it to move forward, Russia-US relations would not only need to be restored to their previous level, but rebuilt from scratch, the observer emphasized.

🟧 Yulia Semke of the High School of Economics’ Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies says the tunnel idea has “symbolic” significance, “drawing attention to the fact that Russia and America are very, very close” geographically, “much closer than America is to Europe.”

🟧 At this stage, however, such a megaproject would need to be economically justified before moving forward, Semke told Sputnik, pointing out that costs could reach $250-$300B.

📍 “This is a missing element in [global] logistics that will greatly facilitate access for US products to Eurasia, and certainly China,” but would first require a “full-fledged, large-scale relaunch” of Russia-US trade ties, which currently lack the guarantees of economic returns needed to justify construction.

👉 In the future, the tunnel “would be an excellent symbol in the context of a new wave of globalization” and “a nice addition to the establishment of full-fledged cooperation” between Russia and the US, Semke summed up.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt