Donald Trump will be able to stop the conflict between Russia and Ukraine if he wins the election in November and returns to the White House, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
Orban, who has a good long-standing relationship with Trump, made the comment in a video message on his Facebook page on Saturday dedicated to his meeting with the 45th US president at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida the previous day.
While he was in office between 2017 and 2021, Trump was “the president of peace, he enjoyed respect all over the world and thus created the conditions for peace,” the Hungarian leader said, stressing that there was no conflict in Ukraine or the Middle East at that time. “Today, there would’ve been no war if he was the US president,” the PM insisted.
According to Orban, Trump and him agreed that “there will be peace if there will be world leaders who want peace.” The Hungarian PM added that he was “proud” that his country was one of those that are striving for peace.
Since the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, Hungary has been consistently calling for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Unlike its EU neighbors, Budapest has refused to provide weapons to Kiev, maintained economic ties with Moscow and criticized the bloc’s sanctions against Russia as “counterproductive.”
Russia has repeatedly said that it is ready for dialogue, but stressed that it hasn’t been getting any reasonable proposals that would account for the actual situation on the ground from Kiev or its backers in the US and the EU. According to Moscow, in such conditions it has no other choice but to keep pursuing its goals in Ukraine via military means.
Orban explained that the aim of his visit to Florida was “to say frankly” that Trump’s second presidency “will be better for the whole world,” not just for ties between Budapest and Washington. The Hungarian PM added that it would, of course, be up to the American people to decide who will be their next head of state.
Earlier this week, Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee in the election as his last renaming rival, Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign after losing primaries in 14 out of 15 states.
US President Joe Biden lashed out at both Trump and Orban during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Friday. “You know who he [Trump] is meeting with today down in Mar-a-Lago? Orban of Hungary, who’s stated flatly that he doesn’t think democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship.” Biden claimed that he himself was looking for a future “where we defend democracy, not diminish it.”
During his campaign, Trump has repeatedly vowed to settle the Ukraine conflict “within 24 hours” if he returns to the Oval Office, claiming he would sit down with both Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
In the fall of 2022, Zelensky signed a decree banning Kiev from negotiating with Putin.