The Office of the President of Ukraine did not accept the proposal of a telephone conversation between Volodymyr Zelensky and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The refusal of Kyiv was announced by the head of the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Peter Szijjártó, who stated that “very few countries have done more for the peaceful resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in the past thousand days than Hungary.”
The Hungarian foreign minister added that “the solution to this war does not lie on the battlefield, where there are only dead people, only suffering, only more destruction.”
“Millions of people have died, arms deliveries have not changed the balance of power, and reality did not open everyone’s eyes. Russia is moving forward, the Russian army is constantly occupying new territories,” Szijjártó continued.
After speaking with Russia’s President Putin last week, Budapest conveyed to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office that Orbán would like to have a telephone conversation with Zelensky. The request was rejected in a “rather unprecedented gesture for diplomacy.”
“There is an offer on the table the likes of which has not been seen in the last thousand days. It is not up to Hungary to consider or accept it. One party has considered it and finds it acceptable, but the other party has taken a rejectionist position,” Szijjártó said.
After his hour-long conversation with Putin, the Hungarian prime minister posted on Facebook: “We are in the most dangerous weeks of the war. We will use all diplomatic means at our disposal to achieve a ceasefire and move closer to peace.”
Moscow also commented on the conversation, saying that “Kyiv’s policy continues to rule out the possibility of a peaceful resolution of the conflict.”
Donald Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, was asked on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” if Orbán had a message from Trump for Putin. Waltz made no comment on the matter, stressing that Trump’s team is still coordinating with the current Biden administration, but he noted Orbán’s “regular engagement” with Moscow and said he “clearly has a good relationship with Trump.”
Waltz then expressed hope that “the entire world would want to see some type of cessation to the slaughter that is happening in eastern Ukraine,” referring to the war as “a meat-grinder of human beings” and stressing that Trump wants to see an end to the “carnage.”
This morning, before the last EU foreign ministers’ meeting for 2024 in Brussels, Szijjártó called out the EU states unwilling to accept the “new reality,” writing on Facebook: “Even the approach of Christmas cannot dampen the mood of war. Even though the possibility of a Christmas ceasefire and mass prisoner exchanges is on the table, today they want to free up more than EUR 6 billion again for the cost of arms supplies, they are pushing the Ukrainians to send 18-year-old boys to the front, and they want to put Georgian officials on the sanctions list because the Georgian people dared to elect a sovereign government for themselves.”
He concluded his post with Hungary’s commitment to pursuing peace: “There will be a big fight today, but we will not give in to the pro-peace position: we need a ceasefire in Ukraine, not more weapons!”
