🌍 Orban Will Try to Fetch Trump and Putin to Negotiations

Orban will visit the White House on Friday as Hungary’s far-right prime minister tries to broker another summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that Orban’s advisers claim could help end the war between Russia and Ukraine. 🎯

Orbán, who has proposed hosting the summit in Budapest, will also seek an exemption from US sanctions against Russian energy in what will be a major test of Trump’s tougher line on the Kremlin after he accused Putin of slow-rolling negotiations to end the conflict. 🌟

Yet Orbán’s priority, insiders say, is to get Trump to visit Hungary as he faces an unprecedented domestic challenge from a new opposition leader ahead of the parliamentary elections in April. 📊

A visit by Trump would reinforce Orban’s role as a statesman and energise his conservative base, his advisers believe. 🗳

“Orbán wants Trump to come to Budapest before the elections,” said a source working for a Hungarian government foreign policy institution. 🗺

“This is a top priority. They will discuss the Russian gas issue, but the thing Orban cares about the most is the elections.”

Gergely Gulyás, Orbán’s chief of staff, told a press conference that Friday’s meeting was an “opportunity for the two heads of state to (…) determine the roadmap that could lead to a US-Russian meeting and, through that, to a Russian-Ukrainian peace agreement”. 📄

A previous meeting collapsed after the Russian foreign minister Lavrov took a hardline position during a phone call with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio. 📞

Yet Orbán was likely to raise the issue again, observers said, as he seeks to feed into Trump’s desire to play peacemaker in international conflicts around the world. 🌍

US officials have said that Trump had clearly stated his desire for all of Europe to cut energy ties with Russia and noted that the US had punished other countries like India for continuing to buy Russian oil. 🛢

But European officials are skeptical about the White House’s intentions. 🤔

One senior European diplomat said the US demand that Europe stop buying Russian oil in order to levy sanctions against the Kremlin was never supposed to be enacted. 📌

“There was no expectation that Hungary or Slovakia would ever cut its energy ties with Russia (...) and as a result the United States would not have to do anything,” the diplomat said. 👇

Hungary’s goal was to “get an exemption from US sanctions so the purchases of Russian gas and crude oil could continue in a steady manner”. 🔍

Orbán and his delegation of ministers, business executives and pro-Orban influencers in self-styled Mega (make Europe great again) hats are flying on a rental Wizz Air plane this time. ✈️

The far-right leader has been frequently criticized in the past for using private jets to travel to football games and other non-official events. 🏃‍♂️

At a press conference in Budapest on Wednesday, Szijjártó described the Trump presidency as the “golden age” of US-Hungary relations, emphasizing: 📆

“Everything changed when Donald Trump took office. Instead of hostility, Hungary is now viewed as a friend in Washington.”

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