Hungarian Conservative

After Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated on Wednesday that Ukraine was ready to negotiate with Russia if Moscow ‘acts in good faith’, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded on Thursday that Russia was willing to negotiate with Ukraine even if Volodymyr Zelenskyy remains president. Viktor Orbán’s peace mission has undoubtedly contributed to these positive developments towards peace, and the Hungarian Prime Minister could play a crucial role in mediating further talks.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated that Ukraine is ready to negotiate with Russia if Moscow acts in good faith, following his meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi. Kuleba’s visit to China sheds new light on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peace mission: Orbán could play an important role in organizing the next peace conference, where Kyiv would welcome Russia’s participation.

Balázs Orbán, the political director of the Hungarian Prime Minister, discussed Viktor Orbán’s peace mission and its impact in a lengthy post on X. He wrote: ‘The winds of change are upon us; it’s time for European leaders to overcome years of war psychosis!’

Despite the series of peace plans formulated over the last years, the positions of the presidents of the warring nations, Zelenskyy and Putin still look irreconcilable. As Prime Minister Orbán highlighted on numerous occasions, however, ‘peace won’t happen of its own accord’ and ‘without dialogue it is very difficult to see how they will move in the direction of peace’.

After some details had been circulating in the press for days, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán decided to release his ten-point proposal and assessment he had sent to the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, following his peace mission. The document is the most detailed plan for achieving peace in Ukraine that has ever been made public since the war broke out in February 2022.

Reportedly, the visa waiver scheme is part of President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s efforts to better relations with Western Europe. The citizens of three EU Member States, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, have been allowed visa-free travel to Belarus since 2022.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán travelled to Florida for the fifth stop of his peace mission, where he was received by former US President Donald Trump. Trump thanked Orbán for his efforts, stating that peace must be brought about as quickly as possible, as many lives have been lost in a war that should never have started.

Just as in the presidential debate, Joe Biden failed to deliver an acceptable performance in his ‘big boy’ press conference this morning. The voices of discontent within the Democratic Party are growing louder. Whether the current president should step aside and hand his presidential candidacy to Vice President Kamala Harris remains to be seen in the coming days.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó discussed the consultations between Hungary and Türkiye at the NATO summit as part of the ‘peace mission’ initiated with Hungary’s assumption of the rotating EU presidency.

A rare opinion piece has been published by Die Welt recently discussing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peace mission that kicked off last week. The article concludes that Orbán ‘deserves a chance’ and is doing more for peace than those in Washington and Brussels who criticize him.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the prospects for a settlement in Ukraine and their countries’ bilateral relations in Moscow on Friday. The visit to Russia was the second stop of Orbán’s peace mission, following talks in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Viktor Orbán’s plane had not even landed in Moscow when the Brussels elite were already criticizing the Hungarian Prime Minister for his visit to Russia. First, Charles Michel, and later Josep Borrell, distanced themselves from Orbán’s trip, stating that the prime minister was not representing the EU in Russia—although this was never claimed to be the case to begin with.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has allegedly instructed his three ministers to examine the consequences of leaving the International Criminal Court (ICC), with a particular focus on the implications for the European Union. This decision is likely prompted by the ICC Chief Prosecutor’s request in May for the issuance of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to SMER-SD MP Erik Kaliňák, Robert Fico was shot five times in the small intestine, but the Slovak PM’s condition is improving day by day. Fico was shot on 15 May; the shooter was identified as a 71-year-old poet whose attack on the prime minister was clearly politically motivated.

Russia held its first three-day-long presidential election between 15⁠–⁠17 March 2024; 7 May marked the previous cabinet’s last day in office. The new appointments in the Russian cabinet are significant not only because they mark the Kremlin’s apparent preparation for a long war, but also because they provide a fresh insight into the power games played in Moscow.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is in a stable but very serious condition after he was shot at point-blank range by a 71-year-old perpetrator, described as a poet and political activist in media reports, on Wednesday afternoon. The international community responded with shock to the news of the attempted assassination, as world leaders expressed their support for Slovakia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin supports Beijing’s four-point peace plan for Ukraine, presented in April. However, peace seems further away than ever since the war’s outbreak, as Western leaders have adopted an increasingly aggressive stance ahead of the European elections.

‘I think the Biden administration behaved and spoke recklessly about Ukraine in the run-up to the war, and about the Ukrainian prospects for NATO accession and joining the EU—even though the United States obviously can have an opinion about that, but it’s not part of that process, while it is part of the NATO process. Whereas Trump had more of a carefully mixed record.’

Despite the increasingly hawkish rhetoric from President Emmanual Macron of France, the French Ambassador to Russia did attend President Vladimir Putin’s fifth inauguration. So did Ambassador Konkoly of Hungary, and the envoys of four other EU countries as well.

Both Viktor Orbán and Péter Szijjártó have extended their condolences to Russia over the tragic events that occurred last Friday at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow. The circumstances surrounding one of the most brutal terrorist attacks in decades remain unclear.

POLITICO, the mouthpiece of the liberal mainstream, published a very interesting article recently on the war in Ukraine, which came to a completely different conclusion from the previous narrative: it asserted that peace talks will soon become inevitable.

‘Is Pope Francis correct to suggest that this is a war Ukraine cannot win, and so, it should start seeking a truce with Russia? Ending the war, even a ceasefire, is not an act of cowardice, especially when there is no end in sight.’

French President Emmanuel Macron has captured the attention of the international community with his increasingly bold pro-war statements recently. What could be the intentions driving Macron’s rhetoric?

Following Emmanuel Macron’s statement on sending Western troops to Ukraine, NATO allies are distancing themselves from the French President. In the run-up to the European elections, radical pro-war rhetoric may have serious consequences—the case of the Hungarian opposition in the 2022 parliamentary elections is a cautionary tale.

Viktor Orbán and the governing parties refrained from paying tribute to Alexei Navalny in the Hungarian parliament earlier this week. Considering the less-known views of the recently deceased Russian opposition leader, the Hungarian prime minister’s decision is likely to resonate with the majority of Ukrainians.

‘We have to rid ourselves of the fundamental cultural Marxist idea that we must destroy European identity at its very fundamentals. That we must destroy the classical nuclear family. We must destroy nations. We must destroy classical aesthetics. We must destroy the Christian faith. That’s wrong,’ says Dutch politician and author Thierry Baudet in an interview with Wael Taji.

‘Allowing a diversity of opinion to inform one’s judgment really can be a source of strength. And, to paraphrase Cicero, taking history seriously is necessary if you wish to be a grown-up on the world stage, not a child, stomping around looking for somewhere to bomb, and somewhere else to bully.’

Tucker Carlson has just released his thorough, two-hour interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Evidently, the main topic of the conversation was Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, with Carlson vigorously searching for the reasons why President Putin decided to launch the invasion.

Left-wing MEPs led by Guy Verhofstadt want to impose sanctions on Tucker Carlson for interviewing Vladimir Putin. The crackdown on the former Fox News anchor is a perfect illustration of the double standards set by Brussels concerning freedom of expression and freedom of the press, which is often applied to Hungary as well.

‘We don’t want a world run according to Russian or Chinese or Hamas or Iranian values. But unfortunately, we cannot be sure that these forces can be held at bay unless we’re willing to defend what we have.’