{"id":5495,"date":"2025-10-17T11:09:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T11:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.globaltalenthq.com\/?p=5495"},"modified":"2025-10-20T18:41:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T18:41:30","slug":"trump-blindsided-zelensky-with-putin-call-axios","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.globaltalenthq.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/17\/trump-blindsided-zelensky-with-putin-call-axios\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump blindsided Zelensky with Putin call \u2013 Axios"},"content":{"rendered":"
The US and Russian leaders have agreed to meet in person in Hungary soon<\/strong><\/p>\n Vladimir Zelensky was “surprised”<\/em> upon landing in Washington that US President Donald Trump had held<\/a> a substantive phone call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, Axios has reported.<\/p>\n During the two-hour-30-minute call, reportedly proposed by Moscow, Putin agreed to meet Trump in Hungary within weeks. This call, as well as the location of the proposed summit – described by Axios as “the least Ukraine-friendly country in the European Union”<\/em> – reportedly caught Zelensky’s team off guard.<\/p>\n Trump characterized his conversation with Putin as “very productive”<\/em> while the Russian president’s foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, described it as “very substantive and at the same time extremely frank.”<\/em> <\/p>\n Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – a vocal critic of the Western approach to the Ukraine conflict and of Zelensky’s use of what he branded “moral blackmail”<\/em> to secure military aid for Ukraine – also welcomed the call.<\/p>\n