BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Russia has won the war in Ukraine, right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Tuesday ahead of a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Friday.
In power since 2010, Orban has been criticised by some European leaders for his government’s ties with Russia and opposition to military aid for Ukraine, while his cabinet is struggling to revive the economy from an inflation shock.
Orban, who has maintained close ties with Putin even after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, became the only European Union leader on Monday not to endorse a joint statement saying Ukraine should have the freedom to decide its future.
“We are talking now as if this were an open-ended war situation, but it is not. The Ukrainians have lost the war. Russia has won this war,” Orban told the ‘Patriot’ YouTube channel in an interview.
“The only question is when and under what circumstances will the West, who are behind the Ukrainians, admit that this has happened and what will result from all this.”
Hungary, which gets most of its energy from Russia, has refused to send weapons to Ukraine, with Orban also strongly opposing Ukraine’s EU membership, saying it would wreak havoc on Hungarian farmers and the wider economy.
Orban said Europe had missed an opportunity to negotiate with Putin under former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration and now was at risk of its future being decided without its involvement.
“If you are not at the negotiating table, you are on the menu,” Orban said, adding that he partly opposed the EU’s joint statement on Ukraine as it made Europe look “ridiculous and pathetic.”
“When two leaders sit down to negotiate with each other, the Americans and the Russians … and you’re not invited there, you don’t rush for the phone, you don’t run around, you don’t shout in from the outside.”
(Reporting by Gergely Szakacs; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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