Last Friday, Mr Orban travelled to Moscow to meet with Putin, three days after a visit to Kyiv where he met Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president.
He also travelled to Beijing on Monday to see Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. Mr Xi has expressed support for Mr Orban’s self-styled Ukraine “peace mission,” despite it being condemned by EU leaders.
The three-part foreign affairs trip was carried out without the support of the European Commission or Ukraine, with Ursula von der Leyen, the commission’s president, claiming it was a form of “appeasement” to Putin.
‘Let’s start negotiating’
In his interview with Bild, the Hungarian prime minister also claimed there was no way to resolve the conflict on the battlefield.
“People, we, the world, want peace, to stop killing each other,” he told the newspaper. “Let’s start negotiating. Or at least understand that there is no solution on the ground.”
After complaining that the EU’s costly support for Ukraine was harming taxpayers, he suggested the bloc should pull away from Washington’s approach to the war and set up an “anonymous” policy.
Western officials accept that the conflict in Ukraine will most likely end in negotiations of some form, as is often the case in wars.
However, there is deep concern that Putin would only be interested in a temporary ceasefire to allow him to bide time, before launching a renewed invasion of Ukraine.