EU alarmed by possible Orbán visit to Putin at start of Hungarian presidency

A trip that, even before being confirmed publicly, has raised a huge storm in Brussels. Especially because of the There is a risk that Orbán will try to claim the representation of the Twenty-Sevenwhen in fact its position is exactly the opposite of that of its other European partners in everything related to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

The Hungarian Prime Minister visited kyiv last Tuesday for the first time in a decade to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In a joint appearance, Orbán demanded that he declare a ceasefire to speed up peace negotiations with Moscow. “Zelensky was not very happy with the idea, but he understood Hungary’s position,” said one of the leading representatives of the radical right in the EU.

[La ‘oveja negra’ se hace con las riendas del club: inquietud en la UE por la presidencia de Orbán]

Orbán has announced that, as leader of the country holding the rotating EU presidency, he intends to prepare A report on “the possibility of peace” for the European Council.

“The rotating presidency of the EU has no mandate to engage in dialogue with Russia on behalf of the EU. The European Council is clear: Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim. Discussions on Ukraine cannot take place without Ukraine,” The President of the European Council wrote on his X account, Charles Michel.

Michel’s tweet seems to confirm Orbán’s visit to Moscow, which has been announced by the Hungarian journalist Szabolcs Panyi, from the research platform VSquare. The Hungarian prime minister will be accompanied in the Kremlin by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Peter Szijjarto.

Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Orbán has been known for blocking or delaying, almost always on his own, successive packages of sanctions against Russia, as well as EU military aid to the government of Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Hungarian Prime Minister is the only European leader to maintain contacts with Vladimir Putin since the outbreak of war, with whom he met in Beijing in October 2023. A visit that already at that time sparked enormous controversy.

“If you have a pro-war position, it is totally logical to introduce sanctions.“But Hungary’s approach is completely different. We oppose all sanctions because our goal is always peace and sanctions have not brought us any closer to peace. But if the other 26 countries want to go in that direction, we only veto sanctions that go against Hungary’s interests, such as those affecting energy,” Orbán’s chief of staff explained in Brussels last week.

If confirmed, Orbán’s visit to the Kremlin would go even further than Brussels’ worst fears about the Hungarian presidency: that the prime minister intends to use this semester as a platform for promote its nationalist and Eurosceptic agenda, and above all to undermine the precarious European unity over Ukraine.