FLASH
Shkruar nga Matthew Chance
According to a Kremlin aide, Putin also praised Trump as a peacemaker in the Middle East and beyond...
Timing in diplomacy is everything, and the Kremlin seems to have perfectly coordinated its latest and longest phone call with the White House, 'head to head' in recent months.
As US President Donald Trump prepares to meet with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington and publicly weighs the risks of supplying Kiev with long-range Tomahawk missiles, Russian officials described the phone call they initiated as "positive and productive," "held in an atmosphere of trust."
In fact, it was a nearly two-and-a-half-hour intervention by President Vladimir Putin, a last-minute attempt to immediately halt all those dangerous talks about potentially game-changing US arms supplies to Ukraine.
Putin said the Tomahawk missiles, which have the range to target major Russian cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, would not have a significant impact on the battlefield. He added that they would only damage the US-Russia relationship, which he knows Trump values.
According to a Kremlin aide, Putin also praised Trump as a peacemaker in the Middle East and beyond.
Economic deals were again suspended and, most importantly, there was an agreement for a second face-to-face presidential summit, this time in Budapest, Hungary, where an end to the war in Ukraine could be discussed again, if no agreement could be reached.
This will inevitably raise comparisons to the failed Alaska summit just a few months ago, when Trump gave Putin a red carpet welcome but failed to deliver tangible results in his efforts for a peace deal in Ukraine.
But now, buoyed by his achievements in brokering a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages, Trump has suggested that his success in the Middle East will, against all odds, help end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
It remains unclear how this could happen.
The Kremlin has offered no sign that it is prepared to compromise. Despite mounting battlefield casualties and an increase in Ukrainian drone attacks on its energy infrastructure, causing fuel shortages across the country, Russia has repeatedly ruled out ending the war in Ukraine until it has achieved its maximalist objectives.
These include taking control over vast swaths of annexed Ukrainian territory that have not yet been occupied, and imposing strict military and foreign policy restrictions on a post-war Ukraine that would essentially subjugate Kiev to Moscow's will.
Nothing in the recent Trump-Putin call suggested that any of this had changed.
But over the past 9 months of this second Trump administration, the Kremlin has also learned that offering personal commitment and offering the possibility of a short-term victory can be just as effective as any painful compromise.
Ukrainian officials, gathered in Washington, say it is the discussion about Tomahawk missiles that forced Putin to return to dialogue.
That may be true. But the calculations in Moscow are that the prospect of progress in peace talks alone may be enough to entice Trump, who is eager for a deal, to back down from his military threats. / Adapted from CNN /
Ne se Trump vepron si President Putini groposet nje here e pergjithmone e ne se vepron si Businessman e Apprentice Boss do rruaje ndonje Sazan e Gaza tjeter te ndertoje Trump Towers.