Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is getting it in the neck from the rest of the Western allies for going to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin and daring to talk about peace.

Western leaders plan to have words with the Hungarian strongman about “Hungary's interpretation of its role as an honest broker during its EU presidency,” which kicked off on July 1. The EU elite are furious that Orban took it on himself to simply ask Russian President Vladimir Putin what he wants to bring the war to an end.

And why shouldn’t he ask? Over a 100 were killed in a massive daytime missile attack that in particular hit the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital, the biggest in Ukraine, that specialises in treating children with complicated problems like cancer. Surely stopping this war as soon as possible is in everyone’s interests? Even Putin is now regularly signalling that he is open for talks, although the conditions he has offered so far are a non-starter for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Orban went from Moscow on to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, who was, again, surprisingly outspoken about the need to end the conflict in Ukraine. But no one trusts Xi either. The final leg on Orban’s “peace mission” will be the Nato summit that is about to start in Washington.

Orban doesn’t care. Thanks to the need for a unanimous vote on all important EU business there is very little the EU elite can do to him. He can just withhold Hungary’s vote on some important issue and watch the rest of Brussels squirm if they try. He is now trying to capitalise on the lurch to the right and build up a “Patriots of Europe” bloc in the European Parliament from the influx of fresh far right and populist MEP blood.

The bottom line is that it shows that the cracks in the EU-Ukraine unity are getting wider. While uber-Russia hawk European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has been reappointed president and Kaja Kallas made EU foreign policy chief, the polls show the majority of the EU population are ready for a negotiated ceasefire to begin. There is a growing disconnect between what the EU elite want and what the public want.

The Nato summit is going to be more of the same. It comes on the back of the failed Swiss peace summit held on June 16-17 that was supposed to reinforce the isolation of Russia mandate, but in the end had the opposite effect: too few Global South countries turned up and too few signed off on what was already an extremely weak final communiqué. Zelenskiy has refused to consider anyone’s peace plan other than his own 10-point peace plan that he presented at the G20 summit in November 2022 but at the Swiss summit this was watered down to a mere three of the least contentious points – POW exchanges, food security and nuclear safety – and the delegates struggled to endorse even those.

The New York Times (NYT) reported today that the Nato summit is already looking like it will be a similar disunity-fest, as US President Joe Biden is struggling after his debate fiasco, French President Emmanuel Macron is fighting for his political life after the snap elections and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also took a body blow in the recent EU elections, to name only a few of the problems.

And here too the main objective of the Nato summit – to create a roadmap for Ukraine’s accession – is dead in the water before the meeting begins. There is talk of a “bridge” to Nato, but this is classic Euro-nonsense that means nothing. It doesn’t even go as far as “road”, as roads go somewhere. All bridges do is cross some bit of water but don’t get you to a destination. bne IntelliNews’ deep dive on Ukraine’s three Ms problem highlights the details of the increasing pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is under from the lack of men, money and materiel.

Contrast all this with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's love-in with Putin that started in Moscow yesterday. I spent the day on several panels on Indian TV and it was fascinating to see the local attitudes.

My fellow panellists were all surprisingly angry. They all highlighted how deep the friendship with Russia runs that goes back to Soviet times. It’s said that Russia’s relationship with China is a marriage of convenience, but the relationship with India is a genuine and warm relationship. That is tied in with Russia's (debatable) image as anti-colonialist that plays so well in Africa, and persistent prevalence of the communist ideology in Indian domestic politics among other things.

But more shocking was the barbed comments about the West, which they saw as an arrogant meddler, that tells them what to do while failing to apply the same standards to its own behaviour: in other words, exactly Putin’s double-standards criticism of the G7. In general, I think the whole Global South is fed up with being lectured to by the holier-than-thou West about values the West routinely ignores. Gaza… etc.

They all also referred to India as an “emerging superpower” and clearly believe it’s time that India stands up for its own interests. That makes their non-participation in, specifically “Western”, sanctions a no-brainer. bne IntelliNews has reported on the rest of the world’s attitude that the war in Europe is a European problem that the Global South sees as none of its business.

Later the same day, on X most of my (predominantly European and US) interlocutors scoffed at the idea that India is a superpower, even if you point out that it's now the third largest country in the world in terms of adjusted GDP. Three of the four largest economies in the world are now BRICS members (China, India and Russia in that order, with the US in second place). And all three of the BRICS members are growing faster than their western peers, while Japan (fifth) and Germany (sixth) are stagnating and falling down the rankings.

Both China and India are due to overtake the US in nominal terms too by about 2070.

The other point to note from Modi’s trip is while the opprobrium was heaped upon Orban, Modi’s decision to spend two days cuddling with Putin has been met with almost complete silence. That is because the West can do even less about his decision to visit than they can about Orban’s.

This was made especially poignant as another point all my fellow panellists brought up without fail was “India is the biggest democracy in the world and just carried out the biggest election in history.” Given the values framing of the East-West clash, you would have thought one substantial Western politician would have at least reminded Modi that “democracies don’t do Russia.” But nothing.

And Modi’s trip highlights a third worrying trend. Pre-war international relations wonks were already worried about the post-2014 sanctions driving Russia into China’s arms as a really bad idea. What Modi’s trip shows is that Russia is being driven into all of China’s, India’s, Brazil’s and Iran’s arms.

These are not bilateral relations anymore. They are multilateral non-Western relations. The BRICS+ summit last year was difficult but expanded that group. And Modi had a field day at last year’s G20 summit, hosted by India, that brought in the whole of the African Union and was dominated by Modi.

These deepening multilateral and non-Western groupings could have wide-ranging consequences. India has a big problem with China, but Russia can help with that. Iran has big problems with other countries in the Middle East, especially with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), but Russia can help with that too.

Putin is playing this game well. He has moved a lot closer to North Korea with a trip in June, as part of a move to put a little distance between him and China, which has traditionally ruled supreme in Pyongyang.

Putin followed that trip up with another to Vietnam, which is also keen for better relations with Russia simply as a counterweight to China’s strength in the Pacific Rim. Ditto lots of countries in SE Asia where China is throwing its weight about.

Everyone thought that Russia would just become China’s raw materials warehouse, but it’s starting to look like Putin is trying to cut out a role for Russia that is a keystone that holds up a complicated but increasingly powerful Global South alliance that stands in opposition to the US hegemony. And Russia has been playing that game since the Cold War. The Kremlin has already emerged as an “honest broker” in the Middle East, which it has been courting from well before the start of the war in Ukraine. Its African project that started with the first Russia-Africa summit in 2019 is also well advanced. It appears Russia wants to extend this diplomacy to Asia.

And, BTW, the Russian first half budget numbers just came out. It’s becoming increasingly obvious the sanctions have not only failed, but have actually backfired. The Russian federal deficit has fallen to just 0.5% of GDP – despite massive $100bn military spending – and the Ministry of Economy has upgraded its growth forecast for this year to 3.8% – that’s even more than last year’s 3.6%, and that was an upside surprise.