Hungarian Prime Viktor Orbán met Dec. 9 with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, his nominee for National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Elon Musk at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. The visit appears to be part of an Orbán “peace mission” to end the NATO proxy war against Russia in neighboring Ukraine. He launched his peace initiative in July, and now includes collaboration with Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia, like Hungary, an EU and NATO member which also borders Ukraine, and suffers from the war next door.
Orbán posted photos of himself with Trump on X, writing, “The future has begun.”
Some of the steps that Orbán and Fico have undertaken in the peace mission include Orbán’s Dec. 4 meeting in the Apostolic Palace with the Pope. Catholic News Agency wrote: “Pope Francis, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán Talk Ukraine and Family Policies.”
Setting the background, on July 1 Hungary took its turn for six months of the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, which position Orbán used to launch a peace mission. On July 2, he met in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and then in Moscow on July 5 with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Orbán met with Xi Jinping July 8 in Beijing, where he emphasized China’s role as a “key power in creating the conditions for peace.” After attending the NATO summit in Washington, he flew on July 11 to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Donald Trump to brief him on his peace efforts: “We discussed ways to make #peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”
