Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is advocating a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made clear that peace talks can only happen after Ukraine essentially surrenders. 

“If we sit in Brussels, we won’t be able to get any closer to peace. Action must be taken,” Orban said during a regular interview on Hungarian state radio following his visit. 

Orban turned heads this week when he made back-to-back trips to Kyiv and Moscow just days before a major NATO summit in Washington, D.C., next week. Hungary on Monday started its six-month tenure as the president of the EU, which is a rotating role among all members, and this is Orban’s first visit to Ukraine since the invasion started in Feb. 2022. 

European Union Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell rushed out a statement stressing that Orban had no mandate from the union and that he was “not representing the EU in any form.” 

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Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo described the visit as “disturbing” news, writing on social media platform X that the visit shows “disregard for the duties of the EU presidency and undermines interests of the European Union.”

Orban insisted that he had had a “really useful, frank conversation” with Putin about Ukraine, and Putin said that the pair had discussed “possible ways of resolving” the conflict, repeating his demands that Ukraine withdraw all troops from annexed regions. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that Russia had had no idea about the visit until Orban’s camp established contact one day before his arrival. 

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However, Orban admitted that after his two visits, he realized that the “positions are far apart” between Kyiv and Moscow, adding that “the number of steps needed to end the war and bring about peace is many,” Euractiv reported.

Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban (L) and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi (R) shake hands during a press conference on July 2, 2024, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Orban visited Ukraine for the first time since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion.  (Viktor Kovalchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Ukraine’s foreign ministry stressed that Orban had made the trip “without any agreement or coordination with Ukraine.”

Leaders of NATO member states will meet in Washington, D.C., next week to mark the alliance’s 75th anniversary and tackle the issue of how to resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, now well into its third year. 

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin meets with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban at the Kremlin in Moscow on July 5, 2024. (Valery Sharifulin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

In a pre-summit background call, the White House laid out its goals for the week, including the announcement of new steps to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses and military capabilities, all with the intent of ultimately sending a “strong signal” to Putin that NATO will outlast him if needed. 

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“We’re also going to send an important message to the rest of the world, including through our partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, as we stand together united and in support of democratic values,” a White House spokesperson told reporters. 

But Orban’s trip has angered his allies, drawing backlash from various leaders across the bloc who deemed his visit to Moscow in particular a danger to their position in negotiations with Putin. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (L) attend their joint press conference at the Senat Palace of Moscow’s Kremlin on July 5, 2024, in Moscow, Russia.  ( Contributor/Getty Images)

“With such a meeting the Hungarian presidency ends before it has really begun,” one EU diplomat told Reuters. “Hungary does not seem to have understood its role. . . . The skepticism of EU member states was unfortunately justified – it’s all about promoting Budapest’s interests.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X, “Appeasement will not stop Putin,” and “only unity and determination will pave the path to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine.” 

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre labeled the visit as “counterproductive” for NATO and argued that the visit “will not advance the cause of peace.” 

Pope Francis said global democracy was “not in good health” as he encouraged Catholics to work for peace in Ukraine, Palestine and other conflict zones. 

His comments came during a visit to the northern Italian city of Trieste on Sunday, which marked the 50th Social Week of Italian Catholics. This year, he addressed the theme of democracy in crisis. 

As part of the trip, he went to the Generali Convention Centre, where the leader of the Catholic Church addressed the state of global democracy and its functionality. 

“Let’s be honest, in today’s world democracy is not in good health,” Francis said. 

“I am concerned about the small number of people who voted,” he continued, stressing the importance of creating conditions that allow everyone to express themselves and participate in the democratic process. 

“Indifference is a cancer to democracy, a non-participation.”  

The pope addressed 8,500 people gathered in the Piazza dell’Unità d’Italia, urging them to renew their commitment to pray and work for peace in Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, Myanmar and wherever there is war.  

WASHINGTON (AP) — Growing skepticism about President Joe Biden’s reelection chances has European leaders heading to the NATO summit in Washington confronting the prospect that the military alliance’s most prominent critic, Donald Trump, may return to power over its mightiest military.

NATO — made up of 32 European and North American allies committed to defending each other from armed attack — will stress strength through solidarity as it celebrates its 75th anniversary during the summit starting Tuesday. Event host Biden, who pulled allies into a global network to help Ukraine fight off Russia’s invasion, has called the alliance the most unified it has ever been.

But behind the scenes, a dominant topic will be preparing for possible division, as the power of far-right forces unfriendly to NATO grows in the U.S. and other countries including France, raising concerns about how strong support will stay for the alliance and the military aid that its members send to Ukraine.

At the presidential debate, Biden asked Trump: “You’re going to stay in NATO or you’re going to pull out of NATO?” Trump tilted his head in a shrug.

Biden’s poor debate performance set off a frenzy about whether the 81-year-old president is fit for office or should step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate.

Even before the debate, European governments were deep in consultations on what they could do to ensure that NATO, Western support for Ukraine and the security of individual NATO countries will endure should Trump win back the presidency in November and temper U.S. contributions.

Some Americans and Europeans call it “Trump-proofing” NATO — or “future-proofing” it when the political advances of other far-right political blocs in Europe are factored in.

This week’s summit, held in the city where the mutual-defense alliance was founded in 1949, was once expected to be a celebration of NATO’s endurance. Now, a European official said, it looks “gloomy.”

There are two reasons for the gloom: Russian advances on the battlefield in the months that Trump-allied congressional Republicans delayed U.S. arms and funding to Ukraine. And the possibility of far-right governments unfriendly to NATO coming to power.

The official spoke to reporters last week on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations among governments.

Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow on NATO with nonpartisan think tank the Atlantic Council, says she has a blunt message for Europeans: “Freaking out about a second Trump term helps no one.”

For allies at the summit, she said, the key will be resisting the temptation to dwell on the details of unprecedented events in U.S. politics and put their heads down on readying Western military aid for Ukraine and preparing for any lessening of U.S. support.

Trump, who before and after his presidency has spoken admiringly of Russian President Vladimir Putin and harshly of NATO, often focuses his complaints on the U.S. share of the alliance’s costs. Biden himself warned nearly 30 years ago about already-steady criticism of Europeans not carrying their weight in NATO.

The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union lulled the West into thinking the Russian threat had been neutralized, leading to military spending cuts. Now, NATO allies are bolstering their forces against any wider aggression by Putin, and a record 23 nations in NATO are meeting defense-spending goals.

Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, says Trump in a second term would work to get the U.S. out of NATO. Congress passed legislation last year making that harder, but a president could simply stop collaborating in some or all of NATO’s missions.

Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Elections in France, likewise, appear set to bring a NATO-adverse far-right party under Marine Le Pen into greater power. Far-right forces also are gaining in Germany.

Some European officials and analysts say that’s simply the rise and fall of voter allegiance in democracies, which NATO has dealt with before. They point to Poland, where a right-wing party lost power last year and whose people have been among NATO’s most ardent supporters. They also note Italy, where right-wing populist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has won praise as an ally.

In part in response to the United States’ political upheaval, Europeans say they want to “institutionalize” support for Ukraine within NATO, lessening the dependence on the U.S.

European allies also failed to get enough weapons to Ukraine during the delay in a U.S. foreign aid package, outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged in a visit to Washington last month.

That’s “one of the reasons why I believe that we should have a stronger NATO role — is that role in providing the support,” Stoltenberg told reporters.

An initiative likely to be endorsed at the summit is NATO taking more responsibility for coordinating training and military and financial assistance for Ukraine’s forces, instead of the U.S. Europeans also are talking of giving Ukrainians a greater presence within NATO bodies, though there’s no consensus yet on Ukraine joining the alliance.

Europeans say NATO countries are coordinating statements on Ukraine for the summit to make clear, for example, that additional Russian escalation would face substantial new sanctions and other penalties from the West. That’s even if the U.S., under Trump, doesn’t act.

As for NATO security overall, besides European allies upping defense spending, they’re huddling on defense strategies that don’t rely as much on the U.S. There’s also growing emphasis on ensuring each country is capable of fielding armies and fighting wars, the European official said.

The possibility of a less dependable U.S. partner under Trump is generating discussions about Europeans playing a bigger role in NATO’s nuclear deterrence, according to the Poland-based Centre for Eastern Studies security think tank. The U.S. now plays the determinative role in the nuclear weapons stationed in Europe.

But European countries and Canada, with their smaller military budgets and economies, are years from being able to fill any U.S.-sized hole in NATO.

“If an American president comes into office and says, ‘We’re done with that,’ there is definitely will in Europe to backfill the American role,” said John Deni, a senior fellow on security at the Atlantic Council. “The Brits would jump on it.”

But “even they will acknowledge they do not have the capacity or the capability, and they can’t do it at the speed and the scale that we can,” Deni said. “This notion that we are somehow Trump-proofing or future-proofing the American commitment — either to Ukraine or to NATO — I think that mostly is fantasy.”