Orban Visits Trump: “Let’s Keep Peacekeeping Mission Going”
Hungary's prime minister left the NATO summit in Washington before it officially closed in order to travel to Florida and meet with Donald Trump. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó: “We will continue to strive for dialog”
Calls for “order” from European Union political leaders, including outgoing European Council President Charles Michel, as well as from some member states – French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that the trip to Moscow took place without the EU mandate – have left Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, rotating president of the Council of the European Union from July 1 to Dec. 31, 2024, indifferent. Orban also recognized the fact that the EU presidency “does not empower the foreign policy of the twenty-seven.”
Nevertheless, the Hungarian leader is not giving up, and after visiting Kiev, Moscow, and Beijing, Orban left the NATO summit in Washington early Thursday morning to visit Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. Following the meeting, he said he was confident that the former and likely future US president would “solve the problem” of the conflict in Ukraine if he returned to the White House after the November elections. The two leaders have seen each other several times in the past.
Orban presented to Trump the results of talks with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the last three “peacekeeping missions.” Orban emphasized that nothing could stop him and that he was determined to continue his mediation work despite “protests from Brussels.”
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, who, representing Orban, attended the NATO meeting in Washington, also said so. “We will continue our commitment to the dialog,” Budapest’s diplomatic chief said, “because the EU strategy of the last two years has shown itself to be a complete failure.”
