Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Wednesday that he had proposed the idea of Ukraine and Russia establishing a Christmas truce, but it was rejected by Ukrainian President Voldomyr Zelensky.
“At the end of the Hungarian EU Presidency, we made new efforts for peace. We proposed a Christmas ceasefire and a large-scale prisoner exchange,” Orban wrote on X. “It’s sad that President [Zelensky] clearly rejected and ruled this out today. We did what we could!”
Orban didn’t specify how the proposal was presented or how Russia responded. His post on X was a response to Zelensky apparently taking a shot at the Hungarian leader for speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier in the day.
“We all hope that [Orban] at least won’t call Assad in Moscow to listen to his hour-long lectures as well,” Zelensky wrote on X, referring to the recently deposed Syrian leader who fled to Moscow. “There can be no discussions about the war that Russia wages against Ukraine without Ukraine.”
In Orban’s statement on the call with Putin, he said Hungary is “taking every possible diplomatic step to argue in favor of a ceasefire and [peace] talks.”
The Kremlin said that during the call, Putin blamed Ukraine for the lack of a diplomatic solution to the war. “Vladimir Putin shared his fundamental views on the current developments surrounding Ukraine and the destructive policies of the Kiev regime, which continue to rule out the possibility of resolving the conflict peacefully,” the Kremlin said.
Orban has been one of the few NATO leaders who has maintained contact with Putin, and he has consistently called for a ceasefire in Ukraine, angering other European Union nations.
