Viktor Orbán encourages EU leaders to reopen diplomatic relations with Russia in private letter

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has written a private letter to the leaders of the European Union informing them that Donald Trump will initiate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine if he wins the US presidential election in November, and also said that Trump has "well-established plans" for the talks, the Financial Times has learned.

According to the Hungarian prime minister, this means that the EU must reopen direct diplomatic communication with Russia and engage in high-level talks with China in order to find a solution for a peaceful resolution to the war in Ukraine.

In the letter, Orbán also wrote that his general observation from his recent talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was that "the intensity of the military conflict will radically escalate in the near future". According to the FT, the letter was sent after the Hungarian prime minister had held talks in Moscow and Beijing.

Viktor Orbán visited four countries in the last two weeks, first meeting Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv and then visiting Moscow, where he held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He then flew to Beijing, where he was received by Chinese President Xi Jinping. His next stop was the NATO summit in Washington, where he shook hands with Joe Biden, but held talks with former US president Donald Trump afterwards.

The Prime Minister's posts about his visits included the logo of the Hungarian EU presidency several times, and at the press conference held after their meeting in Moscow Vladimir Putin said that he believed Orbán was there on behalf of the EU Presidency, which the Hungarian Prime Minister did not dispute on the spot. This caused widespread outrage among European Union leaders. On Monday, the chief spokesman for the European Commission officially announced that the body would only be represented at a lower level at informal meetings organised by the Hungarian presidency, and that no commissioners would be travelling to Budapest either. Eric Mamer said this was due to the events surrounding the launch of the Hungarian Presidency.

We contacted Bertalan Havasi, the Hungarian prime minister's spokesman to ask him to confirm whether such a letter had been sent, whether the FT's reports about its content were true, and how it was received by the EU leadership. We will update this article as soon as we receive answers.