BUDAPEST, June 3. /TASS/. A solution to the Ukraine conflict will be part of a major deal between Moscow and Washington, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said.
"It’s not right to think that a peace agreement or a ceasefire will be the result of Russia-Ukraine talks. It’s never going to happen. This is not where peace will come from. Peace and a ceasefire can only be the result of Russia-US negotiations," he pointed out in a conversation with a group of political scientists and journalists taking part in the Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest.
Orban believes that "it’s only possible to reach an agreement through a deal between Russia and America, which would not be just about the war, territories and borders [in Ukraine], but also about trade, energy, investment and NATO’s expansion. All this should be part of a broad package, and only the US president can do that," the Hungarian premier added.
"The Ukrainians aren’t strong enough to make a deal with Russia" that would end the conflict, Orban noted. In his view, even though the European Union continues to provide military assistance to Ukraine, Russia still has the advantage on the battlefield.
In this regard, the premier recalled his July 2024 trip to Kiev, where he tried to persuade Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a ceasefire but the latter rejected the idea as he believed time was on his side. According to Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin later also rejected the initiative because he, too, believed time was on his side. "The only difference is that he turned out to be right," the Hungarian prime minister concluded.