Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban yesterday celebrated his country’s status as the host of upcoming talks between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a meeting where the two leaders are expected to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine.
Trump on Thursday announced his second meeting this year with Putin a day before he was to sit down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
A date for the meeting has not been set, but Trump said it would take place in Budapest and suggested it could happen in about two weeks.
Photo: Reuters
Orban, a close Trump ally and considered Putin’s closest partner in the EU, suggested that his long-standing opposition to the West supplying Ukraine with military and financial aid to assist in its defense against Russia’s invasion had played a role in making Budapest the site of the talks.
“Budapest is essentially the only place in Europe today where such a meeting could be held, primarily because Hungary is almost the only pro-peace country,” Orban said. “For three years, we have been the only country that has consistently, openly, loudly and actively advocated for peace.”
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hungary has refused to supply Ukraine with weapons or allow their transfer across its borders. Orban has threatened to veto certain EU sanctions against Moscow and held up the bloc’s adoption of major EU funding packages to Kyiv.
It has also resisted weaning off of Russian fossil fuels that help fund Moscow’s war and has increased its supplies since the invasion.
Budapest hosting the Trump-Putin meeting holds symbolic significance: It was in the Hungarian capital in 1994 that the US, the UK and Russia granted Ukraine assurances of sovereignty and territorial integrity in exchange for Kyiv giving up its nuclear weapons.
Yet for many Ukrainians, the Budapest Memorandum has become a symbol of promises that carried no weight after Moscow shredded the agreement first with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and then with the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Orban, who has often taken an adversarial stance against Ukraine and Zelenskiy, has consistently portrayed his position as pro-peace, while casting his European partners that favor assisting Kyiv in its defense as warmongers. Yet Orban’s critics view Hungary’s position as favoring the aggressor in the war and splintering European unity in the face of Russian threats.
Orban said he had spoken to Trump on Thursday evening and would speak directly with Putin yesterday morning, adding that while the upcoming negotiations in Budapest were “not about Hungary,” the capital’s hosting of the meeting could be viewed as a personal political success.
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