Orbán celebrates Hungary as ‘the only place in Europe’ where a Trump-Putin meeting can be held

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday celebrated his country’s status as the host of upcoming talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, a meeting where the two leaders are expected to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine.

Trump on Thursday announced his second meeting this year with Putin a day before he was to sit down with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House. A date for the meeting has not been set, but Trump said it would take place in Hungary’s capital, Budapest, and suggested it could happen in about two weeks.

Hungary opposes the West’s support of Ukraine

Speaking to state radio on Friday, Orbán, a close Trump ally and considered Putin’s closest partner in the European Union, suggested that his long-standing opposition to the West supplying Ukraine with military and financial aid for its defense against Russia’s invasion had played a role in making Budapest the site of the talks.

“Budapest is essentially the only place in Europe today where such a meeting could be held, primarily because Hungary is almost the only pro-peace country,” Orbán said. “For three years, we have been the only country that has consistently, openly, loudly and actively advocated for peace.”

Orbán, who has often taken an adversarial stance toward Ukraine and Zelenskyy, has consistently portrayed his position as pro-peace, while casting as warmongers his European partners that favor assisting Kyiv in its defense. Yet Orbán’s critics view Hungary’s position as favoring the aggressor in the war and splintering European unity in the face of Russian threats.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hungary, a NATO member, has refused to supply Ukraine with weapons or allow their transfer across its borders. Orbán has threatened to veto certain EU sanctions against Moscow and held up the bloc’s adoption of major funding packages to Kyiv.

Meanwhile, Hungary has actively resisted weaning off of Russian fossil fuels that help fund Moscow’s war, and, in contrast to almost all of the EU’s other 26 countries, has even increased its supplies since the 2022 invasion.

Organizing a meeting with Putin is complicated

The meeting in Budapest comes after Trump failed to secure an agreement to end the war in Ukraine during an August meeting with Putin in Alaska. Falling short of his campaign pledge to quickly stop the bloodshed, Trump rolled out the red carpet for the man who started it.

A trip to Budapest for Putin would require him flying through the airspace of several NATO member countries, a potential complicating factor in organizing the meeting. Yet while Putin’s assets have been frozen by the EU, he is not subject to a travel ban in Europe. Russian planes are banned from entering the bloc, but member countries are permitted to allow certain flights in.

Hungary is also a signatory to the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, which in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes. As a signatory, Orbán’s government would be required to arrest Putin if he set foot on Hungarian soil.

However, Orbán said in April that his country would begin the process of withdrawing from the court after he gave red carpet treatment in Budapest to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also faced an ICC warrant on suspicion of crimes against humanity, which he denies.

Speaking at a news conference on Friday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said that Hungary’s government would “welcome” Putin, and that it did not require approval from any institutions or allies to host the Russian president.

“We assure him that he will be able to enter Hungary, have a successful negotiation and then return home,” Szijjártó said. “There is no need for any consultation with anyone. We are a sovereign country.”

Budapest a symbolic location for talks

Budapest hosting the Trump-Putin meeting also holds symbolic significance: It was in the Hungarian capital in 1994 that the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia granted Ukraine assurances of sovereignty and territorial integrity in exchange for Kyiv giving up its nuclear weapons.

Yet for many Ukrainians, the Budapest Memorandum has become a symbol of promises that carried no weight after Moscow shredded the agreement first with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and then with the full-scale invasion in 2022.

On Friday, Orbán said he’d spoken to Trump on Thursday evening and would speak directly with Putin on Friday morning. Set to face the most challenging election of his last 15 years in power in April, Orbán said that while the upcoming negotiations in Budapest were “not about Hungary,” the capital’s hosting of the meeting could be viewed as a personal political success.

“God knows when was the last time there was such an important diplomatic event in Hungary, where we are not simply hosts, but it is also considered a political achievement,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Lorne Cook contributed from Brussels.