Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said at the NATO summit in Washington that Ukraine should not join the alliance, Bloomberg reports citing sources. However, the news agency specifies, leaders of other NATO countries rejected Orban’s statement.
Everything started out very favourably: on the second day of Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the European Union, the country’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited Kiev to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. However, Bloomberg writes, things quickly went downhill after that. Without any coordination with allies, Orban travelled three days later to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin, then to Beijing, and then to Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.
As the news outlet notes, this undermined EU unity on Ukraine amid the NATO summit in Washington. Moreover, at the summit itself, sources say, during a plenary session in the presence of Vladimir Zelenskyy, Orban not only refused to accede to the alliance’s promises of military support for Ukraine, but also said that Ukraine “should not join NATO at all.”
Leaders of several states countered the Hungarian prime minister, with one pointing out that Hungary’s own history shows why Kiev should join the alliance. Several leading European politicians later criticised Orban. However, Bloomberg writes, Orban doesn’t seem to have been hurt by the criticism, and while everyone is waiting for his next move, he is “savouring the moment”.