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

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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.

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 been crucial 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 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.

Péter Krekó, director of the Political Capital think tank in Budapest, told The Associated Press he believes that the Trump-Putin talks being scheduled in Hungary — without the participation of any Ukrainian or EU officials — appeared to be a “huge victory” for Putin.

“He can use the platform of a NATO country for these kinds of so-called peace negotiations, and around a table where no leaders are sympathetic towards Ukraine and no leaders seems to be very staunch defenders of the sovereignty of Ukraine,” Krekó said.

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.

Krekó, the analyst, said Putin's visit to Budapest would underline a common thread in the foreign policies of Trump, Putin and Orbán: "They are all hostile to multilateralism."

“The EU is irrelevant, NATO to a certain extent is irrelevant, the ICC is irrelevant. What matters is when strong men are sitting around the table and deciding over the fate of the world,” Krekó said.

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.

Sergiy Gerasymchuk, deputy director of the Kyiv-based Ukrainian Prism think tank, said that many Ukrainians hold “negative associations” toward the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which 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.

When hearing that the next round of Trump-Putin talks would take place in Hungary, Gerasymchuk said, "The first thing that came to my mind was, ‘Okay, another Budapest memorandum, another memorandum where Ukraine should give up its interests for nobody knows what.’”

The choice of Budapest as a venue, he continued, could be viewed as an attempt by Trump to provide a political boost for his ally Orbán, who is set to face the most challenging election of his last 15 years in power in April.

“Bearing in mind that Viktor Orbán keeps his peacemaking image high on the agenda of the upcoming elections, (the talks) can be a success story,” Gerasymchuk said. “(Orbán) can finally prove that he has achieved something — if not peace in Ukraine, then at least a visit of world leaders to Budapest.”

On Friday, 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 political achievement.”

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Associated Press writer Lorne Cook contributed from Brussels. Béla Szandelszky contributed from Kyiv, Ukraine.