Budapest summit failure: Why Putin got Trump wrong - The Telegraph

Against the background of the announced summit in Budapest, many analysts saw in this confirmation of suspicions that Moscow intends to buy time by leading Trump along. The American president was accused of naivety - as if the White House once again believed in the possibility of a diplomatic breakthrough in the issue of peace in Ukraine, which the Kremlin did not count on from the very beginning. However, subsequent events showed that the situation is developing differently.

This is reported in The Telegraph. Due to diplomatic failures, the Trump administration began to adjust the strategy of pressure on the Kremlin — from sanctions to discussing the supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. After the August summit in Alaska, Washington provided Kyiv with additional intelligence support for strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

The results were not long in coming: two attacks by Ukrainian drones caused serious damage to facilities in the Samara region — the Gazprom plant in Orenburg and the Rosneft Novokuibyshev refinery. As a result, Russia has lost some of its export capacity, and the overall level of idle equipment is estimated to have increased from 22% to 38%, costing the country's budget tens of millions of dollars every day.

Meanwhile, Moscow responds with the usual rhetoric — the Russian authorities are trying to show calmness and threaten "punitive measures. " Andriy Kartapolov, the head of the State Duma's defense committee, said that "the response will be harsh and asymmetric," and Dmytro Medvedev, the deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, warned of "bad consequences for everyone.

" However, sources in Washington indicate that the Trump administration intends to continue the policy of pressure. The US has already prepared a package of new sanctions against Russia and is considering a partial lifting of restrictions on Ukraine's use of long-range missiles.

Putin, according to analysts, found himself in a difficult situation: diplomatic maneuvering is yielding fewer and fewer results, and the consequences of Ukrainian attacks on infrastructure are becoming more and more tangible. "Following the headlines about numerous attempts to conclude an agreement, Russia is now under real pressure. Putin may not consider Trump's cease-fire proposal profitable now, but he may soon regret his intransigence," the analysts concluded.

It will be recalled that the USA announced a decision on new sanctions against the Russian Federation for the war against Ukraine. Finance Minister Scott Bessent announced a "significant push" in the matter of imposing sanctions against the Kremlin in the near future.

And on October 22, The Wall Street Journal reported that the administration of the American president allegedly allowed Ukraine to use some types of long-range missiles, supplied by Western allies, for attacks on the Russian Federation. However, Donald Trump himself later wrote on the Truth Social social network that this was fake information. "The USA has nothing to do with these missiles, no matter where they come from and no matter what Ukraine does with them!" - says the message.