European Council president Charles Michel has called on Viktor Orban to “set the record straight” over the Hungarian prime minister’s freelance diplomacy with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
Mr Michel said Mr Orban had no mandate to use his country’s six-month rotating presidency of the EU to deviate from jointly agreed foreign policy stances on Ukraine or other issues. “I cannot accept your claim that we have led a ‘pro-war policy’,” Michel wrote in a letter seen by Bloomberg. “It is quite the opposite. Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is the victim exercising its legitimate right to self-defence.”
Mr Orban had written to Mr Michel and EU leaders following his self-styled peace mission to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which caused uproar in capitals across Europe.
Mr Trump will be ready to act as a peace broker immediately and has a “detailed and well-founded plan”, the Hungarian prime minister wrote in a letter reported earlier by the Financial Times and later seen by Bloomberg. The former US president has said before that he will seek a quick peace deal if he is re-elected but has yet to provide details of how he intends to do that.
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Mr Orban added he was “convinced that in the likely outcome of the victory of President Trump, the proportion of the financial burden between the US and the EU will significantly change to the EU’s disadvantage when it comes to the financial support of Ukraine” and that Europe’s strategy had copied the “pro-war strategy of the US”.
The Hungarian premier proposed high-level talks with China on the modalities of a peace conference and reopening diplomatic channels with Russia.
Mr Michel replied that “no discussion about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine” and “the most direct way to peace is for Russia to withdraw all of its forces from Ukraine” and respect the country’s territorial integrity. He also noted that the EU has worked to build support for a just and lasting peace based on the United Nations charter and international law, and had reached out to all key partners, including China. – Bloomberg