Hungary’s Viktor Orban gushes over Trump after ‘peace talks’ at Mar-a-Lago

While Joe Biden was meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, DC, on Thursday as part of the latest NATO summit to discuss ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, his presidential rival Donald Trump was hosting Hungary’s Kremlin-friendly authoritarian leader Viktor Orban at his home in Florida.

Orban branded his visit “peace mission 5.0” in a tweet, posting a picture of himself posing beside the American at Mar-a-Lago as both men grinned and made the thumbs-up sign.

“We discussed ways to make peace,” the Hungarian prime minister wrote. “The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

Trump replied to that with a message of his own that read: “There must be PEACE, and quickly. Too many people have died in a war that should never have started!”

The presumptive presidential nominee has repeatedly claimed that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his western neighbour state in February 2022 would never have happened if he had remained in power, promising to resolve the conflict quickly should he win back the White House while also expressing confidence he can secure the release of imprisoned American journalist Evan Gershkovich with minimal diplomatic fuss.

Before heading south for his latest reunion with Trump in Palm Beach, Orban attended the DC summit as his country currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, although the PM is something of an outlier on the issue of Ukraine, given his friendly relations with Putin, opposition to supplying Kyiv with weapons and rejection of sanctions against Moscow.

Orban met Putin in person in Moscow on July 5, just three days before brutal Russian air strikes hit a children’s hospital, but did not sit down for bilateral talks with Biden at the summit, having endured an