Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has reportedly offered to U.S. President Trump to host peace talks between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky in Budapest.
Following President Trump’s meeting with European leaders and President Zelensky at the White House on Monday, and a call with President Putin, the American leader reportedly called one of his longest-standing political allies on the old continent, Prime Minister Orbán.
During the discussion, Mr Orbán offered the Hungarian capital of Budapest as a potential neutral meeting ground for the apparently impending meeting between Putin and Zelensky, according to a report from Bloomberg relayed by the Hungarian broadsheet Magyar Nemzet.
While relations between much of Europe and Moscow have deteriorated since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Orbán has maintained a cordial stance towards Russia and has been one of the few EU leaders to meet with Putin amid the war.
The Hungarian PM has yet to confirm the offer of a Budapest summit publicly; however, on Tuesday, Orbán again stressed the importance of diplomacy and the personal intervention of President Trump. The populist premier has long maintained that only Trump has the political weight to end the war and that the invasion would never have occurred under his leadership.
Although Hungary may be an amenable location for President Trump and President Putin, it may not be as desirable for Zelensky, given Orbán’s stalwart opposition to Ukraine becoming a member of the European Union or NATO. As a member state of both groups, Orbán holds veto power over the admission of Ukraine into either alliance.
President Trump reportedly raised the issue of allowing Ukraine into the EU during his conversation with Orbán as an additional level of security guarantee to Kyiv in the event of a peace settlement with Moscow.
The Hungarian leader, who has argued that admitting Ukraine into the bloc would damage his country’s economy and risk dragging Europe into a full-on conflict with Russia, rejected the notion that EU membership would guarantee security for Ukraine and therefore should not be part of the peace negotiations.
The globalist wing of the European Union, which has long sought to undermine Orbán over his nationalist-populist domestic agenda, also appears opposed to Budapest as a peace venue.
Arch-Eurocrat and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on Wednesday: “Budapest? Not everyone may remember this, but in 1994 Ukraine already got assurances of territorial integrity from the US, Russia and the UK. In Budapest. Maybe I’m superstitious, but this time I would try to find another place.”
President Emmanuel Macron of France has suggested that talks be held in Geneva, Switzerland. However, despite the alpine nation’s reputation for diplomatic neutrality, this has perhaps been undermined by the Swiss joining Western sanctions against Russia. In an overture to Moscow, Bern offered to grant immunity to all Russian officials from the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued over the invasion of Ukraine.
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