MOSCOW: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban held talks on a potential Ukrainian peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, angering some European Union leaders who warned against appeasing Moscow and said he did not speak for the EU.

Hungary assumed the six-month rotating presidency of the bloc on Monday. Five days in and Orban has visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv and formed the “Patriots for Europe” alliance with other right-wing nationalists.

Then he went to Moscow on a “peace mission”, days before a NATO summit that will address further military aid for Ukraine against what the Western defence alliance has called Russia’s “unprovoked war of aggression”.

It was the first meeting of an EU leader with Putin in Moscow since April 2022, two months after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Orban’s first since then, although the two have met elsewhere.

Orban’s trip drew strong rebukes from fellow EU leaders and Ukraine said it had not been consulted beforehand.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that only unity and determination within the 27-nation EU would pave the way to a just and lasting peace in Ukraine”.

“Appeasement will not stop Putin,” she said on X.

Putin, who received Orban in the Kremlin, said the talks had been useful, but accused Ukraine of not wanting to end the two-and-a-half-year-old war and said his own ideas on how to end the conflict — which Ukraine has said are tantamount to surrender — were the way forward.

“Their implementation, it seems to us, would make it possible to stop hostilities and begin negotiations,” Putin told reporters.

“I have repeatedly said that we have always been and remain open to discussing a political and diplomatic settlement.

However, on the other side (of the conflict), we hear about the reluctance to resolve issues in this particular way.”

Putin said last month that Russia would end the conflict, which Moscow calls a special military operation to protect its own security, if Kyiv drops its aspirations to Nato membership.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2024