By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
MOSCOW/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine followed by peace talks, according to several diplomats and a Worthy News assessment.
The meeting came just days after Orbán met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, where he proposed a ceasefire.
The peace initiative comes in a week when Hungary took over the rotating European Union presidency from Belgium on July 1.
Yet the outgoing president of the EU’s policy-setting European Council, Charles Michel, condemned the trip by Orbán, who is seen as one of the EU’s most pro-Kremlin leaders.
“The EU rotating presidency has no mandate to engage with Russia on behalf of the EU,” he fumed on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
“The European Council is clear: Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim. No discussions about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine,” Michel added.
MANY KILLED
However, with hundreds of thousands of people believed to have been killed or injured since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Orbán said it was time for peace.
Orbán, who was due to be accompanied by his foreign minister, has made clear his government is prepared to host such talks.
Last month, Putin said Russia would end its war — which is believed to have killed and wounded at least 500,000 soldiers on both sides — only if Kyiv met certain conditions.
Those included renouncing its ambitions to join the NATO military alliance and ceding four partially occupied regions that Russia claims in their entirety, in addition to Crimea.
Ukraine dismissed the conditions as absurd and said they amounted to capitulation.
While in Kyiv, Orbán– who maintains close relations with Putin — said he presented Zelenskyy with a cease-fire proposal aimed at pausing fighting with Russia more than two years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
TAKING BREAK?
He said he asked the Ukrainian president “whether it was possible to take a break, to stop the firing, and then continue the negotiations,” adding that a cease-fire “could ensure speeding up the pace of these negotiations.”
The talks were notable because of Orban’s vocal, persistent criticism of Western military aid for Kyiv.
Yet, with Donald J. Trump, a close ally of Orbán, in the race to be re-elected as president, Ukraine realizes there is little time left to change realities at the frontlines.
Trump shares Orbán’s views that there is no military solution to the war and peace talks should start.
Orbán’s visit is the first by an EU leader to Moscow since Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer made an unsuccessful effort to broker an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in April 2022.
Hungary’s prime minister defied his allies last year when he traveled to Beijing to become the first Western leader to meet Putin after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest for “war crimes” against the Russian leader.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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