WATCH: Orban releases video of Moscow visit
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban published a short video on Sunday showing his recent visit to Russia.
The politician unexpectedly visited Moscow on Friday and met with President Vladimir Putin to discuss potential ways of resolving the Ukraine conflict.
The clip posted on Orban’s Facebook page was titled “Mission of peace. Second stop: Moscow.” The video was later obtained by RT Russian.
The clip starts with Orban talking to Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto while still aboard an aircraft, before arriving in the Russian capital. The video continues with the Hungarian prime minister being given a red-carpet welcome at the airport and traveling to the Kremlin in an Aurus vehicle.
Aurus is a line of luxury automobiles created a decade ago to replace the fleet of mostly foreign-made cars used by top Russian officials. The brand debuted at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration in May 2018. A version of the car is used as the Russian president’s official state vehicle.
In the footage, Orban is then seen meeting Putin in the Kremlin, with Szijjarto and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also present. The two leaders are shown talking to the media at a joint press conference. The Hungarian prime minister is then seen leaving the Kremlin.
The visit came just days after Orban's visit to Kiev, where he urged Vladimir Zelensky to seek peace with Russia. During that meeting, the Hungarian prime minister argued that a ceasefire could be the first step towards conflict resolution. Zelensky rejected the idea, insisting that only a military victory could lead to a “just peace.”
Orban called his Moscow trip the first step to restoring dialogue. The move drew criticism from the EU, which said the Hungarian prime minister, whose nation currently holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, had no mandate to speak on behalf of Brussels. Orban denied representing the bloc and maintained that peace could not be achieved “from a comfortable armchair in Brussels” and that waiting for the conflict to “miraculously end” would not work.
