Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Friday boasted that Budapest “is essentially the only place in Europe today” where President Donald Trump could hold a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, “primarily because Hungary is almost the only pro-peace country.”
“For three years, we have been the only country that has consistently, openly, loudly, and actively advocated for peace,” Orban said in an interview with Hungarian state radio.
“Hungary is the island of PEACE!” he exclaimed on social media.
President Trump announced on Thursday that he and Putin agreed to meet in Budapest, on a date yet to be determined, during what Trump described as a “very productive” telephone conversation.
“At the conclusion of the call, we agreed that there will be a meeting of our high level advisors next week. The United States’ initial meetings will be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, together with various other people, to be designated. A meeting location is to be determined,” Trump said.
“President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this ‘inglorious’ war, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end,” he said.
Orban’s notion of advocating for “peace” has included a great deal of hostility toward arming or supporting Ukraine. He has a habit of casting other European powers as warmongers for holding pro-Ukraine positions and he is opposed to allowing Ukraine to enter the European Union. Orban’s political campaigns in Hungary link his opponents to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who Orban strongly dislikes.
When Zelensky complained in September about Hungarian drones crossing into Ukrainian airspace, Orban fired back that Ukraine is not a “sovereign country” and thus had no standing to object.
“I believe my ministers, but let’s say it would have actually flown a few meters there, so what? Ukraine is not an independent country. Ukraine is not a sovereign country, Ukraine is financed by us, the West gives it funds, weapons,” Orban said.
Another reason the Ukrainians might be less than thrilled with Hungary as the scene of the next Trump-Putin summit is that Orban is very close to Russia’s “no-limits partners” in China, who have done nothing against the Russian invasion.
Orban is on good terms with President Trump as well, but Orban’s government said in May that U.S. pressure to decouple economically from China would cross a “red line.” Hungary’s trade minister touted his country’s “excellent trade relations with China” and said “we’re not willing to give those up.”
On Friday, Budapest hosted a “China-Hungary Symposium on State Governance” that included the launch event for the latest book of speeches and writings from Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
“President Xi Jinping’s vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind reminds us that the challenges of the 21st century can only be met through international cooperation,” gushed Sandor Fazekas, deputy speaker of the Hungarian parliament and a leader in Orban’s Fidesz party.
Budapest holds a melancholy place in the Ukrainian imagination because it was the scene of the 1994 negotiations that persuaded Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for guarantees of its security and territorial integrity. Ukrainians believe the promises of the so-called Budapest Memorandum were exposed as hollow when Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 — and completely obliterated when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Orban is probably correct that few other venues in Europe would allow Putin, the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes in Ukraine, to fly into their national capital for a meeting with Trump.
Hungary is a signatory to the ICC treaty and is thus nominally obligated to arrest Putin, but Orban has previously signaled he might withdraw from the treaty. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Friday that Putin would be allowed to enter Budapest and return home without fear of arrest.
“There is no need for any kind of consultation with anyone, we are a sovereign country here. We will receive him with respect, host him, and provide the conditions for him to negotiate with the American president,” Szijjarto said at a press briefing.
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