Orbán believes Putin won't give up war in Ukraine due to election campaign

Tichys Einblich reported this with reference to an article about the meeting.

“Orban is destroying the hope that Putin will sooner or later give up the war. After all, presidential elections are coming up, and those who lost the war will not win elections, even if they are rigged,” Roland Tichy quotes the Hungarian prime minister as saying.

He also claims that Orbán is not pro-Russian because he “says he knows about the cruelty of the Russians, because in 1956 they hanged the then Prime Minister Imre Nagy.”

In addition, according to the Hungarian prime minister, Russia has historically demonstrated that at the beginning of wars it is weak due to “corruption, negligence, incompetence of commanders and terrible tactical mistakes,” but “very soon it switches, mobilizes its forces and learns quickly.”

Speaking about Russia's goal in the war, Orbán believes that it is not the complete conquest of Ukraine (as this would provoke resistance from the population and a "guerrilla war"), but the creation of a buffer zone roughly along the contact line in Donbas.

“A kind of 'death zone' between the western part of Ukraine and NATO on the one hand, and Russia on the other?” Tichys Einblich writes, adding that Hungary's position on an immediate ceasefire and negotiations is the best.

He also criticizes the US and the EU for not having a clear strategy for the war, “other than strengthening Ukraine's reasonable resistance.” In particular, he adds that, according to this logic, NATO will have to send its own troops to Ukraine if it “sooner or later runs out of men.”