The next Putin-Trump meeting will soon take place in Budapest. Prior to their last one in Anchorage, the vision that they were working towards was a resource-centric strategic partnership that could then become a steppingstone towards a more comprehensive one in the future. For that to happen, either Putin had to freeze the frontlines or Trump had to coerce Zelensky into withdrawing from Donbass, but neither could agree to what was requested of them so their New Détente went nowhere.

Even worse, the Europeans then became serious obstacles to peace, even going as far as teaming up with the Brits and Zelensky to propose dangerous "security guarantees" that riled Russia.

Trump ramped up his rhetoric against Putin afterwards, arguably due to him being manipulated by Lindsey Graham and Zelensky, thus culminating in the latest talk about sending Tomahawks to Ukraine.

It was within this tense context that they talked again, right before Zelensky's trip to DC, and agreed to meet in Budapest.

Each side is also coming under a lot of newfound pressure nowadays that conceivably influenced their latest call and plans to meet.

From Russia's side, the new TRIPP corridor will inject Western influence along Russia's southern flank via NATO member Turkiye (despite Russia's thaw with Azerbaijan), Poland is reviving its long-lost Great Power status along Russia's western flank, and Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) revealed last month that French and UK troops are already in Ukraine's Odessa Region.

As for the newfound pressure that the US is nowadays coming under, this concerns the nascent Sino-Indo rapprochement after America's bullying of India backfired, Russia finally clinching a long-negotiated deal with China to build the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline on presumably favorable terms for Beijing, and all of this resulting in the failure of Trump 2.0's Eurasian balancing act.