Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is president of the Council of the European Union until December 31, has sent a letter to the heads of other EU countries briefing them on his recent peace missions, AP reported yesterday. Orbán’s political director Balázs Orbán (not related to the Prime Minister), told the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet in an interview, that Prime Minister Orbán had briefed the leaders of other EU countries “in writing about the negotiations, the experiences of the first phase of the peace mission and the Hungarian proposals. If Europe wants peace and wants to have a decisive say in settling the war and ending the bloodshed, it must now work out and implement a change of direction. A realistic assessment of the situation, realistic goals and the right timing—that’s our approach.”
Orbán’s unannounced meetings, which included a visit with former U.S. President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, estate last week, have led some governments to consider boycotting or limiting participation in a series of upcoming informal meetings in Budapest related to the rotating EU Council presidency. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said last week that Swedish ministers, along with those of Finland (not accidentally new NATO members) and the extreme Russophobic Baltic countries, would not participate in such meetings this summer, while other reports suggest that a planned summit of foreign ministers in Budapest in late August could be disrupted by an EU-wide boycott.
Balázs Orbán added: “The NATO mission for Ukraine is an adventure that does not facilitate security in the region but undermines it, because nobody knows when this will escalate into a direct conflict between NATO and Russia. We would definitely like to stay away from that,” reported TASS. He reiterated that Hungary would not be a party to coordinating arms deliveries and training Ukrainian servicemen, nor does it support the initiative to earmark funds for these purposes agreed by other NATO member states at the meeting in Washington.
