A short clip demonstrates the Hungarian prime minister’s surprise trip and meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, published a short video showing his visit to Russia on Sunday. The politician unexpectedly visited Moscow on Friday and met with President Vladimir Putin to discuss ways to resolve the Ukraine conflict.
Footage published on Orban’s Facebook page was titled “Mission of peace. Second stop: Moscow.” The video was later obtained by RT Russian.
The clip starts with Orban talking to Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto while still aboard an aircraft before arriving in the Russian capital. The video continues with the Hungarian prime minister being offered a red-carpet welcome at the airport and traveling to the Kremlin in an Aurus vehicle.
Aurus is a line of luxury vehicles created a decade ago to replace the fleet of mostly foreign-made cars used by top Russian officials. The brand debuted at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration in May 2018. A version of these cars is used as the Russian president’s official state vehicle.
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Orban is then seen meeting Putin in the Kremlin, with Szijjarto and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also present during the talks. The two leaders are shown talking to the media during a joint press conference. The Hungarian prime minister is then seen leaving the Kremlin.
The visit came just days after Orban’s visit to Kiev, where he urged Vladimir Zelensky to seek peace with Russia. During that meeting, the Hungarian prime minister argued that a ceasefire could be the first step toward conflict resolution. Zelensky rejected the idea, insisting that only a military victory could lead to a “just peace.”
Orban called his Moscow trip the first step to restoring dialogue. The move drew criticism from the EU, which said that the Hungarian prime minister, whose nation currently holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, had no mandate to speak on behalf of Brussels. Orban denied representing the bloc and maintained that peace could not be achieved “from a comfortable armchair in Brussels” and that waiting for the conflict to “miraculously end” would not work.
