Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban traveled to Florida on Thursday after a NATO summit in Washington to meet former President Donald Trump, a move likely to deepen frustration among Western allies in a move that echoed his secret visits to Russia and China in recent days.
Orban met with Trump at the former president’s beachfront estate, Mar-a-Lago, and shared a photo of the two on social media with the caption: “We discussed ways to make peace. Good news today – he’s going to fix things!”
In a later post with video of the visit, he said, “We continued our peace mission at Mar-a-Lago. President @realDonaldTrump has proven during his presidency that he is a man of peace. He will do it again!”
Trump posted on his social media sites, “Thank you, Victor. There has to be peace. And it has to come quickly.”
The Hungarian leader has publicly supported Trump’s presidential bid. This year’s presidential election And he expressed hope that Republicans could put an end to it. Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The EU’s longest-serving leader has become a symbol for some conservative populists who advocate “illiberal democracy” that includes restrictions on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. He has also cracked down on Hungary’s media and judiciary, and has been accused by the EU of violating the rule of law and democratic standards.
The Mar-a-Lago meeting was the second Orban attended since March and was seen as the final stop for a “peace delegation” seeking to find a way to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Orban is widely regarded as having the warmest relationship with the Kremlin of any EU leader, and last week he made a surprise visit to Kiev for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Some of his critics interpreted the Kiev visit as a sign that Hungary may be moving closer to the EU’s mainstream pro-Ukrainian stance when it takes over the six-month EU presidency earlier this month.
But those hopes were dashed when he did the following: A surprise trip to Moscow a few days later Meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin was an unusual visit by a European leader to Russia and drew condemnation in Kiev and other European capitals.
He then traveled to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, who described China as a force for stability amid global upheaval and praised China’s “constructive and important” peace initiatives.
Zelensky said he did not know when Orban visited Kiev that the Hungarian president would travel to Moscow.
“Where will he go tomorrow? I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe he will come back to Ukraine,” Zelensky told reporters at the NATO summit in Washington.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg added that it was not up to the military alliance to decide who its members would meet with.
“What’s important to NATO is that all NATO allies agree on policy. And yesterday we had 32 allies agree on a very strong statement. Our support for Ukraine“Stoltenberg said Thursday.
Finnish President Alexander Stubbs, speaking at the NATO summit on Thursday, condemned Orban’s visit to Moscow and Beijing, and EU leaders were quick to say other European leaders did not support his visit.
“I will say this out loud: I don’t see any point in talking to an authoritarian regime that violates international law,” Stubbs said. “He can do it on his own. But I fundamentally disagree with doing it. I simply don’t see the purpose.”
“There’s no good reason to be talking to Putin right now,” Biden said at a news conference after the NATO summit, adding that “there’s not much he can do to adjust to his changing behavior.”
Orban appeared isolated at the Washington summit and spoke little to reporters, according to AFP.
Orban has sought closer ties to Trump and other conservative Republicans, and has expressed his belief that a new Trump presidency is the “only sure chance” of ending the war in Ukraine.
President Trump has repeatedly said that if he were re-elected, he could meet with Putin and Zelensky to end the war “within 24 hours,” a claim denied by Russia’s UN ambassador.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan expressed concern Thursday that a Trump-Orban meeting would be against Ukraine’s interests, saying, “The position of the United States, the position of the Biden administration, is that without Ukraine, we have nothing to do with Ukraine.”
“Any adventurism that is happening without Ukraine’s consent or support is not consistent with our policy, with American foreign policy,” Sullivan told reporters, adding, “I can’t speculate on exactly what Orban is doing.”
Some experts have expressed concern that Orban’s pursuit of a separate foreign policy toward Russia and China, separate from that of EU and NATO partners, risks undermining the unity of those groups.
Meanwhile, European governments have been holding in-depth discussions on: What they can do to ensure Even if Trump (one of the alliance’s most prominent critics) wins the presidential election in November and scales back U.S. contributions, Western support for NATO and Ukraine, and the security of individual NATO countries, will persist.
Daniel Fried, a U.S. government expert on Eastern Europe and former diplomat, said Orban’s relationship with China could be difficult to defend given Trump’s tough messaging toward Beijing.
But if not, it’s very natural and good leadership for a foreign government to approach the next president of the United States, Pride said.
“There will be a lot of foreign ministers and others on the sidelines of the summit having side meetings with people from Trump World,” he said. “I would do the same thing in their stead.”
