Ukraine: Hungary under pressure over Russia outreach

BRUSSELS –

Hungary won’t be allowed to host a strategic EU meeting next month because of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s self-proclaimed “peace mission” trips to Moscow and Beijing this month aimed at brokering an end to the war in Ukraine, which EU partners overwhelmingly saw as undermining their support for Kyiv.

“We have to send a signal, even if it is a symbolic signal,” EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Monday in Brussels, explaining why he had decided that the upcoming foreign and defence ministers’ meeting would take place in Brussels instead of Budapest.

Hungary currently holds the rotating EU presidency, and as such had expected to host the annual late August gathering known as the Gymnich in late August. This gathering should now be held in the EU capital in September, Borrell announced.

Orbán is seen as having the warmest relationship with Russia in the EU and is largely politically isolated in his stance on the Ukraine war. His government has held up sanctions on Moscow and huge tranches of military aid for Kyiv agreed by all other partners.

Before the decision was announced, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said that the idea of moving the August meeting from Budapest to Brussels was a case of “fantastic revenge.”

Szijjártó slammed what he called a “concerted, hysterical, often mocking series of attacks” on Orbán’s recent surprise meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jingping.

Only Slovakia’s deputy foreign minister had vocally offered support to Hungary’s “peace mission,” he noted. Speaking ahead of Borrell’s announcement, Szijjártó nonetheless signalled that he would still attend if the meeting were to be relocated to Brussels.

Borrell said Monday that while condemnation of Hungary’s recent behaviour was widespread, the other EU member states had been divided between those who wanted to attend in Budapest and those who did not. Ultimately he said it was within his power to decide.

The nationalist Orbán startled his EU counterparts with the appearance that he was speaking for the 27-member bloc during his meetings with Putin and Xi. Orbán said he was seeking the quickest path to peace in Ukraine and portrayed himself as uniquely positioned to communicate with both warring parties.

Other EU leaders insisted that Orbán was not representing them at the meetings, and in response, some EU nations as well as the European Commission said their top officials would boycott informal EU meetings hosted by Hungary and send civil servants instead.

Hungary took over the six-month rotating role July 1, and since then Orbán has visited Ukraine, Russia, Azerbaijan, China, and the United States on a world tour he’s touted as “peace mission” aimed at brokering an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Orbán’s critics accuse him of acting against the unity and interests of the EU and NATO, of which Hungary is a member, and of pursuing an appeasement strategy toward Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine.

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Justin Spike in Budapest contributed.