The Chinese leader has welcomed Viktor Orban to Beijing
Chinese President Xi Jinping held a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is currently in Beijing on what he previously dubbed a peacekeeping mission, Xinhua reported on Monday morning.
“China is a key power in creating the conditions for peace in the Russia-Ukraine war. This is why I came to meet with President Xi in Beijing, just two months after his official visit to Budapest,” Orban wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
The details of the meeting have yet to be revealed, but it comes in the wake of Orban’s trips to Kiev and Moscow last week. The Hungarian PM called the Beijing trip a “peace mission 3.0” upon his arrival.
Orban embarked on his “peacekeeping mission” last week with an unannounced trip to Kiev, where he proposed a “quick ceasefire” to Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky. The Hungarian PM then traveled to Moscow to discuss the “shortest way out” of the conflict with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Moscow and Kiev’s positions remain very “far apart,” according to Orban, who noted that Zelensky “didn’t like” his proposals much. Meanwhile, Putin reiterated Moscow’s readiness to resolve hostilities through negotiations but noted that the Ukrainian leadership appears committed to waging war “until the end.”
Orban’s meeting with Putin angered some fellow EU leaders, while Kiev expressed fury that the Hungarian leader went to Russia “without approval or coordination with Ukraine.”
