Orban announces first step towards peace in Ukraine — RT World News

Moscow and kyiv should agree to a ceasefire before working out a detailed peace plan, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said. Speaking at an international economic conference in Cernobbio, Italy, on Friday, he stressed that the two sides would eventually have to sit down at the negotiating table.

For any mediation attempt to be successful, there must be communication with Russia and Ukraine, Orban said. “If we wait for a peace plan accepted by both sides, there will never be peace, because the first step is not a peace plan, but a ceasefire,” he noted.

“First there needs to be communication, then a ceasefire, and then you can negotiate a peace plan,” Orban stressed.

In June, Switzerland hosted a peace conference on Ukraine, to which Russia was not invited. The event focused primarily on Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s “peace formula,” which stipulates that Russia must withdraw its forces from any territory claimed by Ukraine, a plan Moscow has already rejected as “detached from reality”.

After Hungary took over the rotating EU presidency in June, Orban visited kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and Washington as part of his mandate. “peace mission” His trip to Moscow and meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, upset some in Brussels, with EU officials distancing themselves from the venture.

Budapest has long advocated a diplomatic resolution to the conflict rather than arms supplies to kyiv. Viktor Orban is a staunch opponent of military aid to Ukraine and has vowed not to drag Hungary into an open war with Russia.

Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine collapsed in the spring of 2022, with both sides accusing each other of making unrealistic demands. According to Putin, Kiev negotiators had initially agreed to turn Ukraine into a neutral country and limit the size of its army, but then abruptly abandoned the talks.

Putin reiterated on Thursday that Ukraine’s Western backers were determined to turn kyiv into a “Fight to the last Ukrainian” for the purpose of inflicting “a strategic defeat” on Moscow. He stressed that all future negotiations should be based on the documents drafted during the Istanbul talks in 2022.

Zelensky, meanwhile, urged the West to continue to pressure Russia to accept kyiv’s terms. Speaking at a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday, he insisted that Moscow must be forced to accept a deal. “true peace” from this fall.