BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Wednesday he had just spoken at length with Russian President Vladimir Putin and asked him to announce an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine.
Orban said he had invited Putin for talks in Hungary to be held with the Ukrainian and French presidents as well as the German chancellor. He said Putin’s response was “positive” but that the Russian leader said this would carry conditions.
“I suggested to President Putin that he should announce a ceasefire immediately,” Orban told a news conference, adding that it was Putin who called him.
Orban, a conservative nationalist and one of the few European leaders to have good relations with Putin, said the talks he proposed in Budapest should focus on an immediate ceasefire, as peace talks would take a longer time.
“The response was positive but the Russian president said this had conditions. I cannot negotiate to meet those conditions – it should be him and the Ukrainian president agreeing on those.”
Orban, who won a fourth consecutive term in elections on Sunday, again condemned the Russian invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, saying it amounted to “aggression.”
“This is a war that the Russians started, they attacked Ukraine, and it’s aggression, this is the joint stance of the European Union and Hungary shares that stance.”
However, Orban, under whom Hungary has cultivated close business ties with Putin’s Russia, has opposed any EU sanctions on Russian oil and gas or Western arms shipments through Hungarian territory to Ukraine.
Russia says it launched a “special military operation” in Ukraine to demilitarize and “denazify” a country that Putin regards as an illegitimate state.
Moscow refers to its actions in Ukraine as a “special military operation” designed to demilitarise and “denazify” the country. That position is rejected by Ukraine, a parliamentary democracy, and the West as a pretext for an unprovoked invasion.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
