Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to Pay an Unannounced Visit to Ukraine

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will visit the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, on 2 July to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This was reported by the British newspapers Financial Times and The Guardian, citing officials familiar with the plans to organise the meeting. 

It is worth noting that Viktor Orban's visit to Ukraine will take place on the second day after Hungary took over the presidency of the European Union for the next 6 months.

There is no official information about the visit from either side yet.

It will be the first visit by a Hungarian prime minister to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine. Viktor Orban is considered a pro-Russian politician. He is the most prominent critic of the EU and NATO and an Eurosceptic who advocates an end to current military and financial aid to Ukraine. He is one of the few Western leaders to have met with Putin since the Russian military invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the media reports.  Orban's foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, has made at least five trips to Russia since the start of the war, most recently attending an economic forum in St. Petersburg last month.

According to media reports, Viktor Orban will meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials after a previous meeting at the EU summit in Brussels on 27 June.

As a reminder, on 1 July, Hungary took over the presidency of the Council of the European Union from Belgium and took over the organisation of the Council's work for the next six months. This is Hungary's second presidency of this European body. The Hungarian government has chosen a slightly modified but well-known slogan of American ex-President Trump: "Make Europe Great Again". The logo of the Hungarian presidency is based on a stylised image of the famous Rubik's Cube, which symbolises the complexity of the processes taking place in the EU.