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Viktor Orbán arrived in Moscow on Friday to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, defying European leaders who have warned the Hungarian prime minister he does not represent them.
Orbán, whose country took over the rotating EU presidency on Monday, arrived in Russia just days after a surprise trip to Kyiv — his first since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in an apparent effort to broker peace between the two sides.
“As part of his peace mission Viktor Orbán has arrived in Moscow,” his spokesperson told state news agency MTI. “The prime minister is meeting Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia.”
The visit is the first by an EU leader to Russia since Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer visited Moscow in April of 2022 in a failed attempt to convince Putin to end the war.
But on his way to Moscow, Orbán acknowledged that he was not representing the EU, after several leaders on Thursday warned that he was not mandated to speak on their behalf.
“Hungary does not have the mandate to negotiate on behalf of the European Union. I would never pretend. But I can explore the situation,” he told state media on Friday, adding that he would inform the bloc’s leaders whether there was an opening for peace talks, which he admitted were “still a long way off”.
The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, on Friday said Orbán’s visit to Moscow was an “exclusively” bilateral one as the Hungarian leader “has not received any mandate . . . to visit Moscow” and is “not representing the EU in any form”.
European Council president Charles Michel criticised Orbán on Thursday, saying in a post on X that the EU rotating presidency has no legitimacy to speak for the bloc. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk expressed disbelief: “The rumours about your visit to Moscow cannot be true . . . or can they?”
An EU diplomat told the Financial Times that “with such a meeting the Hungarian presidency ends before it has really begun” and that the “scepticism of EU member states was unfortunately justified — it’s all about promoting Budapest’s interests”.
Despite his recent overture to Kyiv, which included three hours of talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Orbán has consistently taken a pro-Russia stance since 2022, delaying EU sanctions on Moscow and opposing aid to Kyiv.
Orbán was also the first western leader to meet Putin at a conference in China last October after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for war crimes allegedly perpetrated by the Russian leader.
Putin defended Orbán from widespread western criticism after that meeting. “They are attacking him not because he has a different position from other European leaders, but because he has the courage to defend the interests of his people,” Putin said. “Many politicians in Europe today lack that courage and envy him.”
Daniel Hegedűs, a political analyst with German Marshall Fund, a think-tank, said these first few days had already shown what the EU can expect from Hungary’s six-month presidency: “disruption, instability and trolling”.
“The Moscow visit is being framed as an endeavour by Orbán to mediate Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, but no one sees the effort as sincere or legitimate,” Hegedűs said.
“Orbán might use and abuse the rotating EU presidency to sow confusion and cause significant symbolic damage to EU foreign policy while advancing the interests of Russia and the west’s other illiberal rivals.”