The Hungarian leader’s trip drew strong rebukes from fellow EU leaders and Ukraine said it had not been consulted beforehand.
EU also said Orban does not speak for the bloc in meeting Putin.Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban held talks on a potential Ukrainian peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, angering some European Union leaders who warned against appeasing Moscow and said he did not speak for the EU.
It was the first meeting of an EU leader with Putin in Moscow since April 2022, two months after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Orban’s first since then, although the two have met elsewhere. “I have repeatedly said that we have always been and remain open to discussing a political and diplomatic settlement.Putin said last month that Russia would end the conflict, which Moscow calls a special military operation to protect its own security, if Kyiv agreed to drop its aspirations to NATO membership and hand over the entirety of four provinces claimed by Moscow - demands Kyiv swiftly rejected as unacceptable.
Orban, a critic of Western military aid to Ukraine who has the warmest relations of any EU leader with Putin, said he recognised he had no EU mandate for the trip, but that peace could not be made “from a comfortable armchair in Brussels”.Orban told reporters after the talks that Hungary viewed its temporary presidency of the EU over the “coming half a year, and the work that will be done then, as a peace mission”.
An EU diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Orban’s trip meant that scepticism within the bloc about Hungary’s presidency was “unfortunately justified – it’s all about promoting Budapest’s interests”.
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