With European leaders likely to be sidelined at the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska, President Orban of Hungary did not sign the European statement pleading for representation at the meeting, saying;

The statement attempts to set conditions for a meeting to which leaders of the EU were not invited...

The fact that the EU was left on the sidelines is sad enough as it is. The only thing that could make things worse is if we started providing instructions from the bench...

The only sensible action for EU leaders is to initiate an EU-Russia summit, based on the example of the US-Russia meeting.

Obviously, apart from Orban, all these EU 'leaders' (plus the UK) just don't seem to get it.

Trump is out to make a bi-lateral deal with Putin in which the Ukraine is just a part, and maybe not the major part, from a US geopolitical perspective.

As Orban says, European leaders need to man-up and meet with Putin themselves instead of shouting at the players from the bench.