Zelensky does not trust Orbán. He hasn’t done it for a long time and much less now than in a few days. A good part of the future of the war in Ukraine will be decided there, something that worries kyiv. “How are you going to reach any agreement on us without us?”
The Ukrainian president openly acknowledges that “I don’t think that a prime minister who blocks Ukraine everywhere can do anything positive for Ukrainians or, at least, anything balanced,” referring to the evident ties between Orbán and Putin.
“We are talking about peace in Ukraine, not elections in Hungary,” Zelensky added this Monday, without hiding the possible “electoralist” interests in the offer made by Orbán to internationalize his image.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion the February 24, 2022the Magyar leader has been the . Orbán’s misgivings about kyiv and about taking any step against Moscow have also been accompanied by inflammatory statements very close to the official discourse of the Putin regime.
Not even Budapest, the Hungarian capital, brings back good memories for Zelensky, who fears that what comes out of the Trump-Putin meeting will replicate the consequences of the historic agreement on 1994 security guarantees. In that signature, kyiv supposedly saw its security reinforced in exchange for giving up possessing nuclear weapons.
“The Budapest Memorandum hurt us. Repeating what happened in Budapest cannot be positive. I already mentioned it to President Trump,” said Zelensky, who nevertheless sees the end of the war “close.” Not as much as happened in Gaza, he immediately clarified.
“Trump wants the war to end, he wants to find one format or another for this” and he believes that the ‘Hungarian format’ could bring the results he wants,” the European leader acknowledged. Marking a difference with what happened with Israel and Hamas, Zelensky alleges that “This war can’t end so quickly“.
“I don’t want to belittle or exaggerate anyone, but we cannot compare what is happening in the Middle East with what is happening here. It is a war of a completely different magnitude. It’s a different story“, he concluded in questions to the press.
