Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán travelled to Moscow on Friday (5 July) to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, only a few days after his visit to Kyiv, on a trip that earned him stern rebukes from EU officials and diplomats.
“Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has arrived in Moscow as part of his peace mission”, Bertalan Havasi, the Prime Minister’s press chief, told Hungarian press agency MTI on Friday.
“The Prime Minister will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin”, the statement added.
This trip comes a few days after Orbán travelled to Kyiv to meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“The aim of the Hungarian presidency is to contribute to solving the challenges ahead of the European Union. That’s why my first trip was to Kyiv,” Orbán wrote on Facebook when he arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday (2 July).
Last week, the EU opened formal membership talks with Kyiv at its summit in Brussels, giving Ukraine a morale-lifting boost, although a long and tough road still lies ahead, before it can join the bloc.
Orbán last met Putin in Beijing in October 2023 at the Belt and Road Forum, where he was the only EU politician to travel.
According to Euractiv’s partner Telex, the fact that the prime minister is meeting Putin just a few days after his visit to Kyiv, indicates that he still considers it important to maintain his relations towards Russia, which his critics considers to be pro-Russian.
Orbán usually defends his relations with Russia, by saying that dialogue is necessary even in times of war. Budapest also argues that Hungary is heavily dependent on Russia for energy, therefore has no interest in hostilities.
However, over the past 14 years in power, Orbán has not done much to reduce Hungary’s dependence on Russia.
Stern rebukes
In a direct rebuke of the visit, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen declared in a post on X that appeasement will not stop Putin.
“Only unity and determination will pave the path to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine” she wrote.
“Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s visit to Moscow takes place, exclusively, in the framework of the bilateral relations between Hungary and Russia,” EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell said in a statement.
The EU’s previously expressed positions “excludes official contacts between the EU and President Putin. The Hungarian Prime Minister is thus not representing the EU in any form,” Borrell said.
“It is worth recalling that President Putin has been indicted by the International Criminal Court and an arrest warrant released for his role in relation to the forced deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia,” he added.
European Council President Charles Michel criticised Orbán’s move already on Thursday, saying that 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,” Michel added in a post on X on Thursday.
According to a senior EU official, Orbán did not inform any of the bloc’s institutions about the trip to Moscow.
”There were numerous attempts to establish contact and confirm reports of PM Orbán possible visit to Russia. These were unsuccessful,” the official said, adding that even if Orbán had asked, he would have been “strongly advised against such a visit.”
Several EU diplomats condemned the visit, saying it was ‘outward contradictory’ to the EU’s current policy line and was ‘putting EU unity at risk.
”It’s only Day 4 of the Hungarian EU presidency and Orbán meets with Putin – that’s quite a pace,” one EU diplomat quipped.
[Edited by Rajnish Singh/Daniel Eck]
