From: Transform Ukraine By Douglas Landro / October 17, 2025
As Trump and Putin planned a Budapest summit, Russia unleashed its largest power-grid attack on Ukraine—while North Korean soldiers guided strikes from Russian soil.
The Day’s Reckoning – When Peace Talks Met Missile Strikes
On October 16, 2025, the war’s contradictions reached their most surreal collision yet. At the very hour President Donald Trump was calling his conversation with Vladimir Putin “very productive,” Russian missiles were already in flight—arcing toward Ukrainian cities in the largest assault of the autumn. Diplomats spoke of Budapest summits and ceasefires, while North Korean drone operators in Russia’s Kursk Oblast adjusted rocket fire into Ukraine’s Sumy region—the first confirmed proof of Pyongyang’s soldiers directly aiding strikes on Ukrainian soil.
It was day 1,331 of a war that no longer resembled its beginnings: peace summits announced between missile barrages, Asian soldiers fighting European battles, and every hint of diplomacy answered by escalation. The day’s events exposed the war’s unshakable paradox—each step toward negotiation only seemed to intensify the fighting.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office after a two-and-a-half-hour call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, announcing plans for a Budapest summit. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The Phone Call That Shook Two Continents
The conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin lasted two and a half hours—long enough for MiG-31 bombers to lift off from Russian airfields and take their positions for the morning’s assault on Ukraine. When Trump emerged from the call, he spoke of “great progress” and “new economic opportunities,” seemingly unaware that as he praised diplomacy, Ukrainian radar screens were already flashing with inbound missiles.
“President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed-upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this ‘inglorious’ War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end,” Trump wrote on Truth Social—capitalizing “War” as if declaring history in motion.
The announcement sent cables flying across Europe. Within hours, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán confirmed his readiness to host the summit, celebrating his long-cultivated role as the bridge between East and West. Yet the timing was no accident. Putin had scheduled the call precisely as President Volodymyr Zelensky’s plane was en route to Washington for his own meeting with Trump. By unveiling his summit first, Putin effectively pre-empted whatever Zelensky hoped to secure in the Oval Office.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov later revealed the real substance of the conversation. Putin had spent much of the call warning Trump about the “destabilizing” prospect of U.S.-supplied Tomahawk missiles—long-range weapons Ukraine desperately sought, and Moscow desperately feared. “Vladimir Putin reiterated that Tomahawks would not change the situation on the battlefield,” Ushakov said, before adding the quiet threat that their delivery would “significantly damage” U.S.-Russian relations.
Voice of Ukraine 