Fresh off the back of his trip to Ukraine, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, according to several media reports.
The meet would take place on the fifth day of Hungary’s turn at the helm of the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU.
Orbán is set to meet with Putin in Moscow, as first reported by Hungarian investigative media outlet VSquare, and later by the Financial Times and Radio Free Europe. Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó will also accompany Orbán to the Kremlin, Radio Free Europe reported, citing a government source.
When asked by POLITICO whether Orbán will be meeting with Putin, a Hungarian presidency spokesperson refused to comment.
Earlier in the day, Zoltán Kovács, Orbán’s international spokesman, told reporters cryptically that Orbán was “off the grid.” “We’re not going to tell you ahead what he’s up to,” he said in Budapest when asked if a trip to Moscow was on the cards.
Following initial reports on Thursday of a possible Orbán-Putin meet in Moscow, the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, wrote on X: “The EU rotating presidency has no mandate to engage with Russia on behalf of the EU.
“The European Council is clear: Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim. No discussions about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk chimed in to question the choice: “The rumours about your visit to Moscow cannot be true [Orbán], or can they?” he wrote on X.
Valérie Hayer, president of the liberal Renew Europe group in the European Parliament, also denounced the visit.
“Prime Minister Orbán is acting without a mandate and not in the interests of the EU,” she wrote on X. “If these rumors are confirmed, we condemn this national solo effort. The European Union is united behind Ukraine, not Viktor Orbán with its hidden agenda.”
Finnish PM Petteri Orpo added to the censure on Twitter: “Disturbing news about Orban’s visit to Moscow. It is clear that he has no mandate to negotiate or discuss on behalf of the EU.
“His visit would show disregard for the duties of the EU Presidency and undermines [the] interests of the European Union.”
Orbán paid a surprise visit to Kyiv on Tuesday, where he met Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Hungarian leader proposed an immediate ceasefire to Zelenskyy, but the president did not publicly comment on the plan.
Orbán spokesman Kovács told reporters that the PM knows he’s not entitled to talk to Zelenskyy in the name of the Council, and said he had undertaken the visit to Kyiv “on his own behalf.”
“But within two hours, a summary of the content of the conversation and the Hungarian standpoint has already been distributed in the Council,” he said. “So that’s what we mean: We go by the rules and that gives a room for maneuver for the member state. We are not only going by the usual way of brokering agreements.”
The idea of an immediate ceasefire is nothing new, with Orbán — considered Russia’s closest ally within the EU after repeatedly obstructing the bloc’s efforts to support Kyiv — having backed the idea since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. But Zelenskyy has previously rejected the notion, saying “a pause on the Ukrainian battlefield will not mean a pause in the war.”
On Wednesday, in an interview with Bloomberg, Zelenskyy said that Putin could not be trusted to honor a ceasefire: “In a war, you can’t just talk about a ceasefire. We need a plan for our people. We cannot trust Putin because for us he is a murderer and an aggressor.”
Speaking after the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit on Thursday, Putin said he didn’t trust the Ukrainian side either: “We cannot allow this ceasefire to be used by the enemy to improve its position … We must ensure that the other side takes steps that are [imperative] for the Russian Federation, so a ceasefire without such an agreement is impossible,” Putin said, as quoted by Russian state media Sputnik.
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