Hungarian analyst's three reasons why Orbán not able to influence war in Ukraine in short term

Orbán neither has a plan, nor a mandate, or any credibility, and he would not be able to have any impact on the Russian-Ukrainian war in the short term, András Rácz, Senior lecturer at Corvinus University of Budapest and Senior Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations wrote in his Facebook post. He lists three reasons for this.

The first is that at this stage in the war, both sides are confident that they can win on the battlefield: the Russian leadership is convinced that when it comes to manpower and military equipment, it can hold out longer than the Western countries are willing to support Ukraine, while the Ukrainian leadership is confident that with continued Western support it will be able to wear the Russian army out. The US presidential election might bring a change in attitude towards Ukraine, but the president will not be inaugurated until January of next year.

"Even if a new US administration (instead of continuing to support Ukraine) were to actually try to force the warring parties to a peace deal, it could in no way begin to work on that before January 2025. In other words, barring some totally unexpected and unforeseeable event (such as the quite horrifying assassination attempt on Trump), the war will continue to be driven by the above-mentioned trends for the next six months, and will not be influenced by the will of the new US administration. On top of that, this timeframe extends well beyond the mandate of the Hungarian EU presidency, which ends at the end of December," Rácz points out.

"In other words, Viktor Orbán can keep running around the world as much as he likes, exploiting the visibility of the EU Presidency, but in the short, six-month term this will have no substantive impact on the course of the war", he added.

But this is not the only reason why the Hungarian Prime Minister's peace mission is meaningless according to Rácz. The expert points out the lack of an actual peace plan. "The whole 'Immediate ceasefire now' is not a plan, it is just an empty slogan. If that were to happen, it would only have one real effect: legitimizing Russian territorial conquests," he wrote. "What makes it clear that Orbán does not possess a plan is that at the three stops on his 'peace mission', Orbán represented three substantially different positions, rather than trying to get one specific plan adopted." In Moscow, the prime minister was not even able to spell out his own ideas, as Putin is adamant that the war must end on Russia's terms. In Ukraine, Viktor Orbán spoke of some kind of gradual ceasefire, while in Beijing he praised the Chinese plan for resolution.

"On the other hand, Orbán has no mandate for mediation. None of the warring parties have asked him to mediate. Nor does he represent the European Union (although he tried in vain to make it look like he did at the beginning of the 'peace mission'), or NATO. The expert also questioned whether it can be seen as a positive thing that the prime minister was able to set up the meetings with Putin and Xi Jinping so quickly, and whether it was really him who initiated the meetings, or whether it was Putin who summoned Orbán after seeing the Kyiv trip. In such a case Orbán would have been unable to say no to it, just as he could not say no to their meeting in Beijing in 2023.

According to Rácz, it is also not true that Viktor Orbán is the only one able to act as an intermediary between the two countries: Turkish President Erdogan, for example, has done so much more often, "and on much more important issues (grain agreement, prisoner exchanges, etc.)", and the Chinese leadership is also in constant communication with both Moscow and Kyiv. "And then we haven't even mentioned that the coordination between Moscow and Washington is of course also ongoing – even if the Hungarian government's media outlets, Magyar Nemzet and Pesti Srácok are not told about it", he added.