“Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is the victim”

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BRUSSELS, Jul 16 () –

The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, has criticised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for his surprise visit to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning him that “Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is the victim”, as well as reminding him that the Council presidency, which Hungary holds this semester, does not have a mandate to represent the EU.

“I cannot accept your claim that we have pursued a ‘pro-war policy’. It is quite the opposite,” Michel said in a letter sent to Orbán, to which Europa Press has had access, in which he criticises him for his visits to Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Michel has sent the letter with a copy to all EU heads of state and government, as Orbán had already done in a first letter he sent to all leaders to justify his trip, which Budapest has described as a “peace mission.”

He also argued that “one cannot talk about Ukraine without talking with Ukraine” and that the EU “has systematically worked to obtain broad international support for a comprehensive, just and lasting peace based on the United Nations Charter and international law, in line with the key principles and objectives of the Ukrainian peace formula.”

“The Union has spared no effort to reach out to all partners in this regard, including China,” added the President of the European Council, who maintains that “the most direct path to peace is for Russia to withdraw all its forces from Ukraine and respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the UN Charter.”

Michel also insisted in his letter to Orbán that “Russia is waging a war of aggression in flagrant violation of international law, the territorial integrity of Ukraine and its sovereignty, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations” and reiterated the EU’s “unwavering commitment” to support Ukraine and its people “for as long as necessary and with the intensity that is required.”

Orbán’s political confrontation has generated such discontent in Brussels that several European governments have refused to attend informal meetings held in Hungary during the six-month period of his presidency, a boycott that has also been joined by the European Commission, which will not send its commissioners to these meetings either, in order to punish the provocation in Budapest.

Earlier, in an ambassadorial discussion last week, all member states except Slovakia had already reprimanded the Hungarian government for the ambiguity with which its prime minister travelled without having a mandate to speak on behalf of the Union but surrounding the visit with the symbols of the EU Council presidency.

He was accused of damaging the unity of the bloc and violating the Treaties by making a surprise trip to Moscow to meet Putin, without coordination with the rest of the European leaders, in an analysis also supported by the Council’s legal services.