Hungary’s Orban is going into the world as a self-proclaimed peacemaker without a plan

Hungary’s Viktor Orban has his entertainment plans wrong, but he has spent two weeks on a whistle-stop tour of Kiev, Moscow, Azerbaijan, Beijing, Washington or even Mar-a-Lago on a one-man challenge. This has angered the leaders of the European Union and America.

“Peace in the Russia-Ukraine war will not come by itself, someone will have to make it,” he declares in videos posted day after day on his Facebook web page.

He has been bitterly attacked by both Brussels and Washington for breaking EU and NATO team spirit and cozying up to Vladimir Putin and China’s leader Xi Jinping.

Some argue, based on their central premise, that misogyny can occur without peacemakers. However, his similar financial love affair with the President of Russia makes him recognizable as Mr Putin’s puppet.

The right-wing Hungarian PM says setting a ceasefire at a specific cut-off date could be a start.

“I am not negotiating on behalf of anyone,” he advised Hungarian radio during a short stop in Budapest between visits to Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev and Mr Putin in Moscow.

For six months at a time, Hungary holds the rotating presidency of the ECU Union.

Mr Orban made his first visit to Kiev since the beginning of the conflict marking the first visit by an EU leader to Russia since April 2022. That trip to the Kremlin clearly angered his European allies.

Charles Michel, head of the ECU Council of 27 EU governments, said the rotating presidency had given the wrong order to negotiate with Russia on behalf of the EU.

Mr Orbán acknowledged that was the case, although he insisted: “I’m clarifying the facts… I’m asking questions.”

In Kiev he gave “three or four” poses to President Zelensky “so that we can understand his intentions, and where the red line is, the extent to which he can go in the interest of peace”.

He has also been generous in his respect for two alternative allies, Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

When meeting with Mr Erdogan as he arrived at a NATO summit in Washington, he told him he was so far “the only person to oversee an agreement between Russia and Ukraine” over the now-expired Dark Sea grain contract. Is related.

According to Chinese media, he said of President Xi Jinping, “China not only likes peace, but has also taken many constructive and important initiatives (to resolve the war).”

Common on his whirlwind tour was meeting presidential candidate Donald Trump, another of his best friends, whom he strongly supports to win re-election in November and whom he refers to as the man of entertainment .

In an interview, he declared that during Trump’s four-year tenure as president “he didn’t start a single war”.

It has been a remarkable journey into the international spotlight for the leader of a small Eastern European country of 9.7 million residents. But who is it designed to affect, and can it have any effect?

A major target of his message is the domestic public.

It’s been a relatively rough year so far for Viktor Orbán, losing two of his party’s most prominent female politicians to a scandal in February, and seeing the rise of Peter Magyar – his first serious challenger in more than a decade.

In June, Mr Orban’s Fidesz party won an impressive 45% in European elections, while Mr Magyar’s three-month-old Tisza party won 30%.

But he lost more than 700,000 votes (one in four) compared to the previous parliamentary elections in 2022.

For the first time he doesn’t seem invincible.

What better way to show Hungarians that their leader is still strong than to parade across the world stage on a global tour to “make peace”?

His mission is also targeted at the international public, with his new Patriots for Europe (PFE) group in the European Parliament this week attracting 84 MEPs from mainly far-right parties in 11 countries.

Patriots of Europe has emerged as the third largest group in parliament, overtaking Italy’s Georgia Meloni’s rival Conservative and Reformist group.

Mr Orban’s visit to Moscow won him rave praise from Russians: “We take it very, very positively. We believe it can be very useful,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

America was less affected.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said, “Of course, we would welcome real diplomacy with Russia to make it clear to Russia that they need to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, that they need to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Is required.” “But that’s not quite what this tour seems to be.”

Also, the US welcomed Mr Orban’s first visit to neighboring Ukraine since the start of a full-scale Russian invasion.