russia-has-already-won-war-says-hungarian-pm-orban

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed that Russia has already emerged victorious in the conflict with Ukraine, adding that it is now up to the West to acknowledge this reality.

 

Orban made the remarks on Tuesday, shortly after refusing to endorse the latest joint EU statement in support of Ukraine. The declaration was issued ahead of the scheduled meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.

 

Speaking to the ‘Patriot’ YouTube channel, the Hungarian leader said he partly opposed the statement because it only made the EU appear “ridiculous and pathetic.”

 

“When two leaders sit down to negotiate with each other, the Americans and the Russians … and you’re not invited there, you don’t rush for the phone, you don’t run around, you don’t shout in from the outside,” Orban said. “If you are not at the negotiating table, you are on the menu.”

 

The Hungarian prime minister asserted that Moscow has already won the conflict and that Kiev’s backers are refusing to face the facts.

 

“We are talking now as if this were an open-ended war situation, but it is not. The Ukrainians have lost the war. Russia has won this war,” he said. “The only question is when and under what circumstances will the West, which is behind the Ukrainians, admit that this has happened, and what will result from all this.”

 

Hungary, a member of both the EU and NATO, has consistently opposed Brussels’ approach to the Ukraine conflict since its escalation in February 2022.

 

This includes rejecting weapons deliveries to Kiev and opposing sanctions on Russia. Budapest has also spoken out against Ukraine’s membership in either the EU or NATO.

 

Tensions between Budapest and Kyiv have been further strained over the treatment of the Hungarian ethnic minority in Western Ukraine.

 

Last week, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Ukraine had no place in the EU and “doesn’t even belong among civilised nations,” citing the recent death of an ethnic Hungarian allegedly at the hands of Ukrainian draft officers.