Orbán to meet Putin in Moscow visit likely to anger EU

Viktor Orbán will travel to Moscow on Friday for talks with Vladimir Putin, sources said, days after Hungary’s prime minister made his first visit to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country.

Two sources in Budapest told the Guardian about the trip, saying it was planned as part of a package with the Ukraine visit after Hungary took over the rotating EU presidency this week.

A high-level EU source confirmed they had been told of the planned visit, which is likely to cause fury in Brussels.

There has so far been no official confirmation of the trip from either Budapest or Moscow, and Hungarian government spokespersons did not reply to requests for comment. Orbán is due to attend a Turkic summit in Azerbaijan later in the day.

Related: ‘Make Europe Great Again’: Hungary sets scene for its EU presidency

In an apparent reference to the planned visit, the European Council president, Charles Michel, wrote on X on Thursday evening: “The EU rotating presidency has no mandate to engage with Russia on behalf of the EU. The European Council is clear: Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim. No discussions about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine.”

Orbán, widely seen as the EU’s most pro-Russian leader, has sought to portray himself as a “pro-peace” politician, but has frequently repeated Russian talking points about the war. He has also held up EU support to Ukraine on numerous occasions, to the frustration of many other European leaders.

“Orbán’s team planned the Moscow trip before he met with [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy,” said a source close to the Hungarian government. “He is trying to mediate between Russia and Ukraine. And after his talk with the Ukrainian president, this meeting makes sense.”

A trip to Moscow is likely to cause further anxiety in Brussels and in other member states, where many are already horrified that a leader who they feel has done everything to undermine European unity and the rule of law in recent years is now the bloc’s main representative for the next six months.

The Hungarian leader maintains links with rightwing groups across the globe and has long suggested Hungary could play a role in bringing peace to Ukraine, but has been mostly ignored.

However, with elections in France later this week and a possible return to the US presidency for Donald Trump, Orbán may sense that the geopolitical winds are changing. “We have had ambitions for a mediating role from the very beginning,” said the source.

In Kyiv, Orbán floated the idea of a quick ceasefire that might accelerate peace talks, a suggestion that Zelenskiy did not comment on.

“The aim of the Hungarian presidency is to contribute to solving the challenges ahead of the European Union. That’s why my first trip was to Kyiv,” Orbán wrote on Facebook.

The Hungarian leader last visited Russia in September 2022 to attend funeral of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, but did not meet Putin on that occasion.

The only other leader of an EU country to visit Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine is the Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer, who travelled there in April 2022, weeks after the start of the invasion.

Since then Putin has largely been shunned by western leaders, with the exception of Orbán, who travelled to Shanghai to meet the Russian president last October.

Orbán’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, who has been awarded a medal by the Russian government, has been a frequent visitor to Russia.