Hungary’s nationalist leader will visit Trump in Mar-a-Lago after NATO summit

NEW YORK — Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will travel to Florida on Thursday to meet the former president donald trump After a NATO Summit in Washington, a move likely to worsen frustrations among Western allies over similar secret trips he has made to Russia and China in recent days.

Orbán will meet with Trump at the former president’s seaside complex, Mar-a-Lago, according to a person familiar with the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private event.

The Hungarian leader openly supported Trump’s candidacy in this year’s presidential elections and placed hope in the Republican’s ability to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The European Union’s longest-serving leader became an icon to some conservative populists for defending what he calls “illiberal democracy”, which includes restrictions immigration It is LGBTQ+ rights. He also repressed the press and judiciary in Hungary and was accused by the EU of violating the rules of law and democracy.

The Mar-a-Lago – Orbán meeting second since March — comes as the last stage of what he calls a “peace mission” that aims to find a way to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Widely considered to have the warmest relations with the Kremlin of any EU leader, Orbán made an unannounced statement visit to Kyiv last week, where he held talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Some of his critics interpreted the Kiev visit as a sign that Hungary could take steps closer to the pro-Ukraine stance of the EU mainstream by assuming the bloc’s six-month rotating presidency earlier this month.

But these hopes were dashed when he made a unannounced trip to Moscow days later to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, a rare trip to Russia by a European leader that drew condemnation from Kiev and other European capitals.

He then flew to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, where he described China as a stabilizing force amid global turmoil and praised its “constructive and important” peace initiatives.

Zelenskyy said that when Orbán visited Kiev, he did not know that the Hungarian leader would also travel to Moscow.

“Where will he go tomorrow? I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe he will return to Ukraine,” Zelenskyy told reporters in the NATO summit in Washington.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg added that it is not up to the military alliance to decide who member countries will meet with.

“What matters for NATO is that all NATO allies agree on the policy. And we agreed yesterday to a very strong statement from the 32 allies expressing our support for Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said on Thursday.

Speaking upon arriving at the NATO summit on Thursday, Finnish President Alexander Stubb rebuked Orbán for his visits to Moscow and Beijing, which EU leaders were quick to clarify were not supported by other European leaders.

“I’ll say it out loud: I don’t think it makes sense to have conversations with authoritarian regimes that violate international law,” Stubb said. “He can do it in his own name. But I fundamentally disagree about that. I just don’t see the point.”

Orbán sought close ties with Trump and other conservative Republicans and expressed his conviction that a new Trump presidency was the “only serious opportunity” to end the war in Ukraine.

Trump has repeatedly said he could resolve the war “in 24 hours” if he were elected president again, meeting with Putin and Zelenskyy — a Russian claim. The United Nations ambassador contested.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Thursday signaled concern that a Trump-Orbán meeting would go against Ukraine’s interests, saying: “The U.S. position — the Biden administration’s position — has nothing to do with it. to do with Ukraine without Ukraine.”

“Any adventurism that is being undertaken without the consent or support of Ukraine, you know, is not consistent with our policy, the foreign policy of the United States,” Sullivan told reporters, adding that he “cannot speculate on what Orbán is exactly right.

Some observers have raised concerns that Orbán’s pursuit of a separate foreign policy toward Russia and China from that of his EU and NATO partners threatens to undermine the unity of those groups.

Meanwhile, European governments engaged in in-depth consultations about what they could do to ensure that NATO, Western support for Ukraine and the security of every NATO country will endure if Trump – one of the military alliance’s most prominent critics – regains the presidency in November and moderates US contributions.

Daniel Fried, a former longtime diplomat and Eastern Europe expert in the U.S. government, said Orban’s ties to China may be difficult for Trump to defend, given his own tough messages toward Beijing.

Otherwise, though, it’s entirely natural, and good leadership, for foreign governments to look for possible next U.S. presidents, Fried said.

“A lot of foreign ministers and other people are probably having side meetings with people close to Trump World” on the sidelines of the summit, he said. “In their place, I would do the same.”

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Spike reported from Budapest, Hungary. AP reporters Aamer Madhani, Ellen Knickmeyer and Rebecca Santana in Washington and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.