The Summit That Sparked a Kremlin Rally: How a Single Phone Call Became a Storyline
The midday news opener on Russia’s most-watched state channel felt less like information and more like curtain-raising: “Donald Trump has heard Vladimir Putin — a bad sign for warmongers,” the announcer intoned, voice steady, the map of Europe glowing behind him.
It was a line designed to do everything that modern propaganda does best: condense a complicated diplomatic moment into a moral fable, draw clear heroes and villains, and invite viewers to feel both vindicated and threatened. Three and a half years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian state television presented a simple thesis — the warmongers are not in Moscow; they are in Brussels, London and Berlin. The friend, on the other hand, is the one who picks up the phone.
Why Hungary?
When word slipped out that a face-to-face meeting between the U.S. and Russian leaders might be prepared in “the coming days,” according to an aide to Vladimir Putin, chatter quickly converged on a single name: Budapest. “Hungary has always been the voice of wisdom and peacekeeping in Europe,” Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s close economic envoy, said in a statement that was aired repeatedly across pro-government outlets.
It’s a neat narrative arc. Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s conservative prime minister, has often been painted as the troublesome sibling in the European family — skeptical of sanctions, courting Russian investment, and wary of any policy that might unmoor his domestic agenda. For Moscow, calling a summit in Hungary plays like theatre: a picturesque Central European capital, a hospitable host, and the implicit message that not all of Europe is rowing in the same direction.
Stagecraft and Signals
These summits are as much about optics as they are about outcomes. A handshake in a silk-paneled room, waves caught on-camera, a joint photo op — those images rewrite headlines and remake reputations. “Putin thrives on the ritual of summitry,” an American foreign policy analyst told me. “Every face-to-face meeting is, for him, an act of legitimation. It signals he’s not a pariah but a player.”
For many Kremlin commentators, the meeting itself is a strategic score. “A personal meeting is arguably his favourite thing to do,” said one commentator on the popular program Time Will Tell, where three-hour panels of pundits and political guests parse every whisper out of the Kremlin. “It elevates him globally.”
What the Kremlin Is Selling
Across Russia’s pro-government media there’s a steady, repeated argument: that the U.S. — or at least a U.S. leader willing to speak directly to Putin — represents a corrective to a quarrelsome and increasingly isolated Europe. Britain and Germany, for example, have been singled out for criticism as the supposed engines of escalation. “They moved the locomotive of war,” a repeat line on morning shows suggested, in language meant to conjure hubristic empire-builders.
The rhetorical pivot is simple. Europe is cast as the coalition of “warmongers,” the U.S. as the pragmatist or at least the debater, and Hungary as the calm, steady voice. In opinion pieces and talk shows, a phrase like “coalition of losers” is trotted out to describe Ukraine’s allies — a clear counterpoint to the earlier Western talk of a “coalition of the willing.”
How the Narrative Lands in Budapest
Walk the Danube embankment in Budapest and you’ll find people nodding, shrugging, or furrowing their brows at the idea of hosting great-power choreography. “If it brings a chance to stop the killing, why not?” said Anna K., a 62-year-old history teacher sipping espresso near the Parliament. “But we also know how the show works — it doesn’t mean promises are kept.”
A street vendor selling paprika and postcards laughed ruefully when I asked whether Hungarians relish the attention. “We like visitors,” he said, “but we are not props in someone else’s fight.”
Smoke, Mirrors—and a Negotiating Playbook
Beyond the pageantry, analysts warn there is a familiar pattern in Moscow’s diplomacy: charm, delay, and revision. “There’s a formula — flattery first, then evasion,” a seasoned diplomat with experience on Eastern European files told me. “You leave the summit with pictures and statements. You often don’t leave with the concessions or mechanisms that end a war.”
That has been the frequent complaint from Kyiv and many Western capitals: meetings without sustainable tracks for de-escalation or enforceable mechanisms. At the same time, to Russia, a summit with the U.S. leader — especially if the leader is presented domestically as congenial — rewrites the argument about isolation. It says: Russia remains a country whose word matters.
What’s at Stake: Beyond Choreography
Ask yourself: are we watching diplomacy or theatre? The answer matters because the human toll does not perform on cue. Since February 24, 2022, the war in Ukraine has displaced millions, shattered lives, and redrawn security calculations across Europe. International monitors and humanitarian agencies have documented enormous civilian suffering — the kind that a hand-written communique can’t erase.
“Summits can quiet headlines for a day,” said a humanitarian worker who has worked in Ukrainian displacement camps. “But without concrete, verified steps — ceasefires, withdrawal, humanitarian corridors — the cameras won’t stop the suffering.”
Echoes of a Larger Crisis
What plays out in television studios and state bulletins connects to deeper themes: the fragility of alliances in polarized times, the performative power of leadership, and the way information channels shape public belief. An electorate that relies on a single dominant source of news is especially vulnerable to narratives that simplify complexity into winners and losers.
And there is another layer: the domestic politics that both shape and are shaped by these international dramas. Leaders use summits to burnish profiles at home. Public diplomacy becomes campaign fodder, and foreign policy becomes a stage for domestic validation.
Questions to Take Away
So where does that leave the rest of us? Does a meeting in Budapest mark a turning point, a pause, or simply a new sequence of managed expectations? Will images of handshakes be followed by enforceable actions that ease suffering, or will they be another episode in a long-running series of diplomatic theatre?
Those are questions best answered by what comes after the cameras are packed away: the paper, the clauses, the monitoring teams, and, most importantly, the lived experience of people on the ground.
As one Ukrainian volunteer put it to me over a late-night phone call: “Photos are nice. Food on the table is nicer.” It’s a blunt way to remind us that the real metric of diplomacy should not be how it looks but who it helps.
