MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday discussed the Ukraine conflict in a call with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is casting himself as a possible peacemaker.
“There was a thorough exchange of views on Ukrainian issues,” the Kremlin said in its readout of the call, adding that Putin said Kyiv had adopted a “destructive” position that ruled out a peace agreement.
The call was initiated at Orban’s request, the Kremlin said, and comes a day after Budapest’s top diplomat said Hungary would forge ahead with its Ukraine “peace mission”.
I had an hour-long phone conversation this morning with President Putin. These are the most dangerous weeks of the #RussiaUkraineWar. We are taking every possible diplomatic step to argue in favour of a ceasefire and #peace talks.
— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) December 11, 2024
Orban met US president-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to secure a peace deal within hours of coming to office in January, at his Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this week.
However, Orban did not relay any message from Trump to Putin, Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitri Peskov told Russian press agency TASS, adding that no conversation between Trump and Putin was being planned at the moment.
“So far there have been no initiatives on the part of Trump, at least we are waiting until the inauguration, and there we will see,” the Kremlin spokesperson added.
“Viktor Orban expressed interest in assisting the joint search for political-diplomatic paths to resolve the crisis,” the Kremlin said.
The Hungarian leader — the closest political partner of both Trump and Putin in the European Union — has repeatedly called for peace talks and refused to send military aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its offensive in February 2022.
He infuriated fellow EU leaders in July by conducting breakaway diplomacy with Russia to explore a path to ending the conflict, just days after taking over the bloc’s rotating six-month presidency.
This comes as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is also doing all he can to position his country at the forefront of efforts to resolve the war in Ukraine.
In this spirit, Tusk invited French President Emmanuel Macron to visit Warsaw on Thursday (December 12) to give a rundown of last weekend’s talks with US President-elect Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Tusk said he was in constant contact with his Scandinavian and Baltic allies and that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer would visit Warsaw when Poland starts taking over the EU’s rotating six-month presidency.
On Tuesday, Tusk said peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia could begin within the next several months.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week met with incoming US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron.
On Monday, Zelensky expressed an openness to negotiations, saying he had told Trump and Macron that he did not believe Putin wanted to end the war.
Tusk said Warsaw would be heavily involved in any talks when it takes up the European Union’s rotating presidency in January.
“I will have a series of talks concerning primarily the situation beyond our eastern border,” he told a government meeting.
“As you can imagine, our delegation will be co-responsible for, among other things, what the political calendar will look like, perhaps what the situation will be like during the negotiations, which may, although there is still a question mark, start in the winter of this year.”
The Kremlin said on Sunday that Russia was open to talks on Ukraine after US President-elect Donald Trump called for “an immediate ceasefire and negotiations”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said peace negotiations had to be based on agreements reached in Istanbul in 2022 and on the current battlefield realities.
Peskov noted that Ukraine has banned contacts with the Russian leadership through a special decree which he said would have to be revoked if talks were to proceed.
“Our position on Ukraine is well known; the conditions for an immediate stop of hostilities were set out by President Putin in his speech to the Russian Foreign Ministry in June of this year. It is important to recall that it was Ukraine that refused and continues to refuse negotiations,” Peskov said as quoted by Reuters news agency.
Trump takes office in January and with his self-image as a great dealmaker boasted on the campaign trail that he could end the war in 24 hours.
Last week, Trump appointed the retired army general Keith Kellogg as his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, tasked primarily with ending the war.
As the US transition approaches, both Moscow and Kyiv are warily considering the prospect of talks, downplaying the idea publicly yet manoeuvring to be in the best possible position when Trump takes office.
Ukraine, after finally receiving a long-requested green light, has begun firing western-supplied long-range missiles into Russia; Putin, in response, used a nuclear-capable ballistic missile to hit the city of Dnipro last month, and followed it up with escalatory threats.
