Xi Jinping meets Orban
Chinese President Xi Jinping has held a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is in Beijing on what he has dubbed a “peacekeeping mission,” Xinhua reported on Monday morning.
“China is a key power in creating the conditions for peace in the Russia-Ukraine war. This is why I came to meet with President Xi in Beijing, just two months after his official visit to Budapest,” Orban wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Details of the meeting have yet to be revealed, but it follows Orban’s trips to Kiev and Moscow last week. The Hungarian prime minister called the Beijing trip a “peace mission 3.0” upon his arrival.
Orban embarked on an unannounced trip to Kiev last Tuesday, where he proposed a “quick ceasefire” to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky. Orban then traveled to Moscow to discuss the “shortest way out” of the conflict with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Moscow’s and Kiev’s positions remain very “far apart,” according to the Hungarian leader, who noted that Zelensky “didn’t like” his proposals. Meanwhile, Putin reiterated Moscow’s readiness to resolve the hostilities through negotiations, but said the Ukrainian leadership appears committed to waging war “until the end.”
Orban’s meeting with Putin angered some fellow EU leaders, while Kiev expressed fury that the Hungarian leader had traveled to Russia “without approval or coordination with Ukraine.”
