Orbán travels to Moscow after visiting Kyiv

Just days after visiting Kyiv, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is about to visit Moscow.

Szabolcs Panyi, journalist of VSquare and Direkt36 who covers Central and Eastern Europe, noted that Viktor Orbán will travel to Moscow on 5 July, just a few days after visiting Kyiv and proposing to Ukraine a truce that would be beneficial to Russia.

According to Panyi, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, who was not part of Orbán’s group in Kyiv and is regarded as a pro-Russian official, will also visit Russia.

Meanwhile, the head of Hungary's Prime Minister's Press Service announced that Orbán will attend the Organisation of Turkic States summit in Azerbaijan on 5 and 6 July.

Orbán last saw Putin in Beijing in October, at the Belt and Road Forum, where he was the only EU politician present.

The current meeting differs in that Hungary formally took over as head of the European Union's Council on 1 July. This entails that Orbán will meet with Putin as head of the EU Council Presidency. 

Hungarian media emphasise that such a meeting, as well as his trip to Kyiv, are preceded by extensive planning, so Orbán may have known he would be visiting Putin this week while negotiating with Zelenskyy. It's unclear whether he discussed his plans with the Ukrainian president or not.

At the talks in Kyiv, Orbán promoted the idea of an urgent truce with Russia, which is in all pro-Russian "peace plans", but did not insist on it.

According to the Hungarian Prime Minister, Zelenskyy expressed misgivings about the logic of Orbán’s idea and does not support it, citing Ukraine's lacklustre experience in negotiating peace with Russia.

As previously reported, Hungary's Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó had a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, while Orbán was meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.