Putin's spokesperson: Kremlin knows nothing about Hungary's ideas on settling Ukrainian conflict

Despite Hungarian Prime MinisterViktor Orbán's allusion to this during his meeting with Donald Trump in Washington, the Kremlin has no information regarding Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s initiatives to resolve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Dmitry Peskov, the Russian President's spokesman said. "We don’t know what these initiatives are. Apparently, after some preliminary review, they will be brought to our attention, but so far we have not had the opportunity to examine them", Vladimir Putin’s spokesman added.

It was during his meeting with Donald Trump at the White House that Viktor Orbán mentioned that Hungary has some ideas about potential diplomatic paths to ending the Russian-Ukrainian war, as well as on how to bring Russia to the negotiating table. At the meeting, the Hungarian Prime Minister emphasized that, in his opinion, European governments are mistaken in thinking that military support for Ukraine will contribute to winning the war against Russia.

When Donald Trump asked him whether he really believed that Ukraine could not win the war, Orbán paused briefly, then threw his hands up in the air and replied with a touch of sarcasm: "Miracles can happen, of course." As noted in our article summarizing the Hungarian government's visit to Washington, Trump's relationship with Ukraine has had many ups and downs, and he is currently on friendlier terms with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and more distrustful of Vladimir Putin, at least when it comes to ending the war.

But despite this, during their meeting, Viktor Orbán was able to reiterate the Kremlin's narrative – without any objection from Donald Trump – according to which, the European governments are pro-war because they are under the illusion that Ukraine can win the war on the front lines. CNN interpreted this as the Hungarian Prime Minister essentially echoing Russian talking points. At the same time, Orbán praised Trump's "valuable peace efforts" and indicated that Hungary would try to support Trump's peace efforts to the best of its ability.

At the end of the conversation, it was mentioned again that if Trump has another meeting with Putin, he would like to hold it in Budapest.