Germany, Hungary in showdown over Orban’s meeting with Russia’s Putin
- Planned talks between Hungarian and German foreign ministers cancelled after Berlin blasted PM Orban’s Ukraine ‘peace mission’ to Moscow
Hungary abruptly told Germany’s foreign minister that she wasn’t welcome after her boss, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, excoriated Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban over his unannounced trip to Moscow.
Orban met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday as part of a self-styled “peace mission” to gauge the chances for an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine, triggering condemnation from Scholz and other European Union leaders who said Orban had no mandate to represent the bloc.
The Russian and Hungarian leaders “talked about the possible ways of resolving” the Ukraine conflict, Putin said in remarks after a bilateral meeting.
Orban in turn said “positions are far apart” between the two sides with “many” steps needed to achieve peace.
Orban, who visited Kyiv a day after he took over the EU’s six-month rotating presidency on July 1, said before the meeting that he had no intention of representing the 27-member bloc.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was scheduled to meet her Hungarian counterpart in Budapest on Monday for talks, but the Hungarian government cancelled the session on Friday evening on short notice to the surprise of the German government, according to an official in Berlin.
