Summit in Budapest. Rubio and Lavrov to meet on October 23 – Reuters

US secretary of state Marco Rubio plans to meet with the head of Kremlin diplomacy Sergey Lavrov on October 23, writes reuters, citing an informed source.

According to him, American officials informed him of this during a meeting with the president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian delegation at the White House on October 17.

The day before, U.S. president Donald Trump, after a call with the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, reported that high-level talks between the two would take place before their meeting. The American leader announced such a meeting during the week of October 20-26.

"I would say that [the meeting with Putin] will be within two weeks, pretty quickly. Marco Rubio will meet with his counterpart, as you know, Lavrov. And they will meet pretty soon. They will determine the time and place of the meeting very soon. It may have already been determined. They have already talked," noted the American president on the same day.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the US secretary of state and Lavrov would begin working on organizing a meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest.

"First, they will call each other and meet, start discussing all the issues. There are a lot of issues, teams need to be defined, etc. Therefore, everything will be done in stages," the official of the aggressor country noted.

On Monday, October 20, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov reported a new phone call between Rubio and Lavrov, but added that there is no date for a meeting between Moscow and Washington on "irritants" yet.

• Meanwhile, President Zelenskyy, in a conversation with his American counterpart, expressed his readiness to come to Budapest.
• The head of state also said that during a meeting at the White House, special envoy Witkoff conveyed to Ukraine a demand to withdraw troops from Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but Kyiv's position remains unchanged.