Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with former US President Donald Trump in the United States on July 11 to discuss a peace deal in Ukraine, and said he would “fix this problem."

"Peace Mission 5.0. I was honoured to visit President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to achieve peace. The good news of the day: he will solve this problem!" Orban posted on the social network X, Ukrayinska Pravda reports.

Orban vowed to “Make Europe Great Again” after taking over the presidency on July 1, in an echo to Trump’s famous MAGA phrase.

Trump, expressing gratitude, emphasized the urgency of peace. "Thank you, Viktor. There must be PEACE, and as soon as possible. Too many people have died in a war that should never have started!" Trump wrote on TruthSocial.

Orban is on a self-declared “peace mission” and is visiting the major players in the conflict. However, his efforts may be still-born after a senior diplomat, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin told the state-run news agency RIA Novosti that Russia will not attend a second planned international summit on peace in Ukraine because "Kyiv will ignore Moscow’s proposals." 

“We’re aware of the intentions of the Kyiv regime and its Western curators to ‘rehabilitate’ themselves for the failed [Swiss] ’peace summit’… and try to hold a similar event [and] invite Russia,” Galuzin told RIA Novosti.  Ukraine has said it could invite Moscow to the next summit if it was prepared to consider Ukraine’s roadmap to peace and stop issuing ultimatums. 

 

Orban has been working hard to kick start talks. His meeting with Trump follows Orban's first trip to Kyiv on July 2 since Hungary assumed the presidency of the EU Council to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy who flatly refused to start talks with Russia.

Orban then put the cat amongst the pigeon by travelling to Moscow, to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, who repeated earlier offers to restart talks on the basis of the Istanbul peace deal agreed in 2022. Orban shared a photo on social media from the Vnukovo government terminal in Moscow, highlighting his Hungarian EU presidency, despite Brussels storm of tweets saying that Orban was not representation the EU and was acting as a freelancer.

Orban's follow up with a visit to Azerbaijan for the Organization of Turkic States summit and a meeting in China with President Xi Jinping, who also called for a dialogue to begin.

The European Union has raised concerns about Hungary's international activities which it has dubbed “fake diplomacy.” Discussions have started about potentially stripping Hungary of the EU presidency prematurely, but analysts say that is unlikely to happen.

Under EU rules the presidency does not grant Hungary the authority to act independently in foreign policy matters. According to the Lisbon Agreement of 2009, which outlines the principles of EU functioning, any foreign policy statements must be coordinated and agreed unanimously with other EU members and authorized by the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Josep Borrell.