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27 July, 2024

What is behind Orbán’s “peace saga”?

What is behind Orbán’s “peace saga”?

As perhaps the most pro-Russian and anti-Western leader of an EU and NATO member state, Viktor Orbán has outdone himself over the past 2 weeks. In many senses. 

As stated in the latest video on the Hungarian leader’s Facebook page, within 10 days he visited 4 countries on 3 continents, spending 72 hours on the road for helding 12 hours of negotiations. 

Viktor Orbán called all this a “peace mission”, which sounds almost like an action movie “Mission Impossible”, one of the parts of which was filmed in Budapest, by the way. 

But let’s have a brief look at exactly this one, by the Hungarian prime-minister.

On the same day, July 1, when Hungary assumed the presidency in the Council of the European Union, Viktor Orbán managed not just to fly to Brussels and back for this matter, but also to cross the Ukrainian-Hungarian border in the evening to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv the next morning, July 2. 

Few days later, on July 5, Viktor Orbán’s plane landed in Moscow, where the Hungarian prime minister met with Vladimir Putin. Please note that it was not a full-fledged visit, but rather a stopover on the way to Azerbaijan. Just compare it with the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (who actually came to Russia on the day of the Russian attack on the Okhmatdyt hospital in Kyiv). Previously, Putin could have seen such a format of Orbán’s visit as humiliation, but not this time.

Eventually, Viktor Orbán did make it to Azerbaijan for an informal summit of heads of state of of organizations of Turkic states, managed to return to Budapest, give an interview to Paul Ronzheimer of the Axel Springer media group, hold a meeting of Hungarian government on Sunday, and landed in Beijing on Monday, July 8 to meet Xi Jinping.

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Photo: EPA-EFE / VIVIEN CHER BENKO

Formally the very next day, on Tuesday, July 9, Viktor Orbán’s plane landed in Washington, D.C., where the NATO anniversary summit began. This time the Hungarian leader did not veto anything or raise concern, even regarding the Washington Summit Declaration with the clear message to China as “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine”. Orbán talked about his “peace mission” primarily with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as another possible mediator. The day after the summit, at which China was officially and jointly named, Viktor Orbán traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the 45th US President Donald Trump.

Quite a mission, indeed. For the sake of full picture, we should also add the Hungarian prime minister’s trips on the eve of the Hungarian EU presidency: meetings with Olaf Scholz in Berlin on June 21, Giorgia Meloni in Rome on June 24, and Emanuel Macron in Paris on June 26, plus – European Summit in Brussels on June 27-28.

This itinerary and schedule are really impressive. No doubt Viktor Orban is in good shape. But could we take away anything substantial from such Orbán’s trip around the world except media buzz? Not really. 

“A ceasefire could speed up the peace talks” – seems that these words, told by the Hungarian prime-minister at a press conference in Kyiv, he tried to pitch as his peace plan everywhere. And that’s it. 

We know for sure that Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin rejected this idea immediately. No surprise. Since 2014, Kyiv has approved 20 ceasefire agreements with Russia, as well as conducted 200 rounds of peace talks, but this has not stopped Putin from launching a full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Kremlin is pursuing other plans in Ukraine, which was once again proved by the aforementioned attack on the Okhmatdyt hospital.

Viktor Orbán is perfectly aware of all this, but he has other goals, and he uses the Russian-Ukrainian war only as an excuse at the right time.

For the last 2 weeks we have become spectators of brilliant and very expensive political performance staged by Viktor Orbán. He did it only for himself, not for anyone else.

Orbán planned this entire “mission” from the very beginning, from Kyiv to Mar-a-Lago, tailored everything to the Hungarian presidency in the EU and forming a new populistic group in the European Parliament, which is now the third largest.

Here is what is probably behind this Henry Kissinger-style shuttle diplomacy of the Hungarian leader: Orbán is creating space for the survival of his own model of Hungary, in fact his regime, which is based on balancing between key global centers – Washington, Beijing, Moscow and Brussels. He calls this the Hungarian strategy for connectivity, or simply “huszárvágás” (“hussar cut”).

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Фото: MTI / Róbert Hegedüs

There is no strategy behind this. But there is a brilliant tactic behind it, which, apparently, in Viktor Orban’s mind is his strategy. In a very simplistic way, it could be described that the Orbán regime guarantees its stability thanks to the security umbrella of NATO, EU funds and markets, cheap gas and oil from Russia, and investment without commitments from China. Viktor Orbán has been building this model step by step since 2010, when he returned to power in Hungary and has been ruling it with a constitutional majority. 

How else can Orbán balance in the situation of Russian aggression in Europe, when Beijing is Moscow’s key ally and relations between China and Washington are increasingly reminiscent of the pre-war state? How else can Orbán balance between the United States and China if Donald Trump returns to the White House and considers Beijing, not Moscow, to be enemy number one?

This is best done from the position of a peace mediator who tries to be useful to all key players. 

It doesn’t put on your shoulders the responsibility to actually ensure peace in Europe, or détente between the US and China. But this gives Orbán’s Hungary more chances to survive the global crisis of the world order, or rather to count on not being punished for collaborating with the enemy until a new big deal is made, where you, as an intermediary, will try to incorporate your small Hungarian interest. 

Make peace, not war

So, with this world tour, Viktor Orbán is selling the Russian-Ukrainian war as a pretext for Donald Trump and Xi Jinping to take up peace in Europe instead of further confrontation between the United States and China. To paraphrase the famous slogan of the 60s: “Make peace, not war”.

Of course, Orbán could not help but play along with Putin, allowing him to use not just the leader of an EU country, but the country that holds the EU presidency, to deliver a Russian ultimatum on Ukraine. And let’s not forget about the supply of Russian gas and Urals oil to Hungary.

Orbán needed a trip to Ukraine to show his friends in the EU and USA that he is not Putin’s agent, but represents the third way that all populists love so much. This was important to successfully launch the new Patriots for Europe group. Besides, the Hungarian leader plans to play the Ukrainian card again, in particular in the near future, to unblock tens of billions of euros that the European Commission has frozen for Budapest due to problems with the rule of law. 

This is also confirmed by the fact that Viktor Orban completely ignored the issue of the rights of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, although this issue was previously called the basis of relations between Kyiv and Budapest. This time, Orban needed Ukraine for something else. In fact he did not abandon the issue of the rights of the Hungarian minority, but only postponed it for later. There is no doubt that Orban will not give up this leverage until the very end, and even after Ukraine joins the EU and NATO. Of course, if the Hungarian prime minister remains in power until then.

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Фото: Dursun Aydemir / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

There is no doubt that with this tour, Viktor Orban sought to troll the entire EU leadership, especially Ursula von der Leyen, saying that I am now in charge of the EU and can do it better than you. And finally, look at how politically great Viktor Orban looks today. You can’t even tell that he had a very bad election a month ago. And again, it is worth paying attention to how insidiously the Hungarian leader has chosen the moment – not only the beginning of the Hungarian presidency in the EU, but also the transition period in the Union, when a new European Commission and other governing bodies are to be formed.  

And finally, with this tour, Viktor Orbán tried to restore his own political self-confidence after the very dubious results of the European Parliament elections in Hungary, in which Fidesz got an unexpected competitor ​​– the TISZA party led by Péter Magyar. This political force was formed in the months before the election and, thanks to its anti-government rhetoric, won almost 30% of the vote, a truly sensational result. Against the backdrop of Orbán’s “peace saga,” Magyar’s triumph is hardly mentioned anymore. 

However, there is still one problem with this “ideal plan”: this bluff is too obvious, especially for the key players on whom the stability of this hybrid regime of Viktor Orban critically depends.


Vitalii Diachuk,
analyst of the Institute for Central European Strategy
Title image: Open AI

* The publication was prepared within the framework of the Re:Open Ukraine project, implemented with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. The opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not reflect those of International Renaissance Foundation.

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