Zelenskyy comments on Orbán's ceasefire proposal
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has publicly commented on a proposal from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during his visit to Ukraine, which called for an immediate truce between Ukraine and Russia.
Zelenskyy emphasised in an interview with Bloomberg TV that mere discussion of a ceasefire is insufficient because a concrete plan is necessary.
"We fundamentally cannot trust Putin because, for us, he is a murderer and an aggressor. It is important that Hungary recognises that Russia is an aggressor and recognises the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine," he said.
The president stressed that Ukraine had had "hundreds of meetings" since the Minsk agreements, aiming to achieve a truce, and Russia had been disrupting all of them.
"Therefore, only if it [ceasefire talks] is [held] on an international and clear platform in the presence of trusted countries and leaders. They have different opinions on the stages of ending this war, but we must all be on the same side, we must trust each other," Zelenskyy explained.
Zelenskyy noted that there must be certainty that Russia would not exploit the ceasefire to amass equipment in the occupied Ukrainian territory when Ukraine, being bound by the ceasefire, would not stop it with its own strikes.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán confirmed that Zelenskyy had rejected his proposed "truce" between Ukraine and Russia that envisaged a freeze on the current line of contact between Ukrainian and Russian forces.
During his visit to Kyiv, the Hungarian leader said that he had promoted the idea of an immediate truce, an idea that is present in all pro-Russian "peace plans," but did not insist on it.
According to Orbán, the Ukrainian president doubted the logic of the Hungarian leader’s plan and did not support it, as Ukraine has a history of unsuccessful truce attempts with Russia.
Such truces "were not good for Ukraine", Orbán quoted Zelenskyy as saying.
After the leaders' meeting in Kyiv, the Hungarian foreign minister called his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.