Chinese President Xi Jinping and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met in Beijing, China Central Television reports.
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“On the morning of July 8, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Hungarian Prime Minister Orban at the Diaoyutai State Residence in Beijing,” the publication says.
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As Orban said after the meeting, Budapest highly values Beijing’s peace initiative in Ukraine. According to him, Hungary is “always on the side of peace and never on the side of war” because the Hungarian people strive for peace, balance and harmony.
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The day before, the press secretary of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Bertalan Havasi, said that Orban, as part of the continuation of the “peace mission,” arrived in Beijing for negotiations with the President of the People’s Republic of China. As noted by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the leaders will discuss issues of mutual interest. Orban himself posted a photo from the airport on social media, captioning it “Peace Mission 3.0. Beijing.”
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On Friday, the prime minister and his delegation arrived in Moscow and met with President Vladimir Putin. The leaders discussed issues related, among other things, to the Ukrainian crisis. According to Orban, the visit was dictated by the interests of his country, as well as the desire to achieve peace in Ukraine.
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The Hungarian Prime Minister called the visit to Moscow the next stage of the peace mission – the first was a trip to Kyiv on July 2. Orban stressed that he intends to hold several more “equally unexpected” meetings.
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Subsequently, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, issued special statements in which they emphasized that Orban does not represent the European Union in the external arena and does not have a mandate to visit Russia, despite the fact that his country became chairman of the EU Council for six months. The EC claims that the prime minister’s trip allegedly violates the unity of the West regarding policy on Ukraine.
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In response, Orbán stressed that due to the “delirium of the Brussels bureaucrats”, efforts to establish peace are not yielding results. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto advised European politicians to “fasten their seat belts” before the prime minister’s next actions within the framework of the “peace mission.”
