Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will meet with Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday, November 28, Telex has learned. This information coincides with VSquare's prior reports. As of yet, the Hungarian government has not released any official information about the trip or its details. In response to our inquiry, the Government Information Center sent the same response on Wednesday morning as it did to Hvg on Tuesday: "We will inform the public about the Prime Minister's trips abroad according to the usual procedure" – in other words, they did not confirm or deny the trip.
Hvg.hu tried to ask Orbán about the trip in person on Tuesday, but they did not receive an answer to their question as security guards kept them at a distance from the Prime Minister.
The last time Viktor Orbán met with Vladimir Putin in person was in July 2024, also in Moscow, when the Hungarian PM traveled to the Russian capital on a so-called "peace mission." At the time, the government did not confirm that the trip was happening until the plane had landed in the Russian capital.
Charles Michel, then President of the European Council, quickly indicated on social media that the Prime Minister of Hungary, which had taken over the rotating EU presidency for six months from July 1, was not authorised to negotiate with Putin on behalf of the EU: "The EU Presidency does not have the authority to conduct negotiations with Russia on behalf of the EU," he wrote.
Viktor Orbán is going to Moscow at a time when crucial negotiations are taking place day-to-day on ending the Russian-Ukrainian war. These are based on the US President's original 28-point plan – only parts of which have become public – one of its most controversial elements being that Russia would not only be allowed to keep the territories it has occupied so far – almost a fifth of Ukraine, 110,000 square kilometers – but also parts of the Donetsk Oblast which it had been unable to occupy during the past more than three years of war. In a message to the Swedish parliament, Ukrainian President Zelensky had previously said that "borders cannot be changed by force" and that “the aggressor must pay in full for the war it started.”
On Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt wrote on X that further negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States would be needed on the peace plan because there were a few "delicate, but not insurmountable" details that still needed to be sorted out.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday morning, it emerged that Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff had been coaching Putin's adviser behind the scenes on how Putin should talk with Trump about ending the war and the peace plan. Russia responded to the leaked audio recording by saying that this is how the American media wants to obstruct the peace process.
A few days ago, Viktor Orbán sent a letter to Ursula von der Leyen calling on the EU to unconditionally support Donald Trump's 28-point peace plan for Ukraine. In the letter, Orbán indicated that the Hungarian government would not support any further EU funding for Kyiv and would not agree to such a decision being made on behalf of the EU.
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