Orbán cabinet: New US administration did not see the war in Ukraine as strategically important

The US is in a position to strengthen ties with Russia, and Ukraine will have to adapt to this reality, Balázs Orbán, the political director of the Prime Minister’s Office, said in an interview to public radio on Tuesday.

He said the US is a decisive player in terms of resolving the conflict and shaping the new European and Western approach to the issue, noting that the US has been key to Ukraine’s defence capabilities over the past three years.

The new US administration, he added, did not see the war in Ukraine as strategically important, so it wanted to shut it down, with “painful and hard” consequences for relations with Ukraine.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had been saying for years that with Donald Trump again in the White House, the US would negotiate directly with Russia to end the war. He made his views clear to all EU heads of state and government in writing, warning that Europe should develop its own peace strategy.

He added that the “European elite” had made poor decisions on all key strategic issues, such as the war, relations with China, US politics, migration, green policy, and competitiveness.

He said Hungary had chosen a starkly different path, developing strategic relations with the new US administration, China, and Russia while generally maintaining pragmatic cooperation and communication channels.

Orbán said Hungary aimed to build good relations with all major powers “based on pragmatic national interest”.

Christian Democrats: Early resolution of armed conflicts ‘shared interest’

An early resolution of armed conflicts and “reopening the doors to a longer period of development through dialogue and on a basis of trust and peace” is a “shared interest”, the group leader of the co-ruling Christian Democrats said in a statement on Monday.

István Simicskó said the outbreak of the war in Ukraine three years ago had been a “shock” for the whole world, while Europe was “unprepared for such a historic turnaround and … the weight of the European Union and Western Europe in global politics dropped below a critical level”.

“Due to Brussels’ ill-advised, globalist politics the community could no longer guarantee peace on the continent,” Simicskó said. He pointed to an “European identity crisis” arising from “giving up the shared Christian foundations” and said that “policies subjected to Western leftists interests” and “pro-war propaganda” were all in conflict with the EU’s “earlier, pro-peace position”. “The pointless sanctions and ill-advised energy policy caused serious damage to the competitiveness of the European economy, and exposed it even more to the interests of the Western globalist liberal elite,” he said.

Simicskó said Hungary’s ruling parties had had a pro-peace position and advocated an immediate ceasefire through diplomacy all along and opposed decisions that could lead to an escalation and hindered a peaceful settlement. “After three years it cannot be a question which path Europe should have chosen; innumerable lives lost on both sides, families torn apart and millions of refugees forced to leave their homes, while the ramifications of the war such as war-time inflation appeared in the everyday life of other countries,” he said.