Orbán posts about Zelensky rejecting Christmas ceasefire

"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. How sad that this was unambiguously rejected and ruled out by President Zelensky today. We did what we could!"

These are the words Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán posted on his Facebook page on Wednesday evening.

During the day, Orbán had spoken by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin for an hour, but he did not give any information on Putin's reaction to his ceasefire proposal, although the parties both said that the situation in Ukraine had been discussed. Referring to the conversation in a social media post, Zelensky said that Orbán could next phone the fallen Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Moscow.

We sent questions to the Prime Minister's Press Secretary and to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to find out how Orbán knew about Zelensky's refusal, when there is no information about any communication between the two on Wednesday (Zelensky had made no mention of it in his post). Bertalan Havasi, the Prime Minister's Press Secretary, responded to our inquiry:

“The Hungarian government immediately informed the head of the Ukrainian President's Office and the Ukrainian Foreign Minister about the telephone conversation with President Putin, indicating that we will keep the channels of communication open towards Ukraine as well. It was to this that the Ukrainian President's public reply was in reference to.”

The Foreign Ministry also reacted to the story on Wednesday evening, with Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó communicating the idea of a ceasefire via MTI (the Hungarian State News Agency). According to this, the idea was raised by Viktor Orbán during his conversation with Putin, and the Hungarian government contacted Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Andrii Yermak. Szijjártó said that the channels of communication are open in all directions and they intend to keep them open. He added:

“What a pity that a few minutes ago, President Zelensky, in a public message on X, ended up ruling out and rejecting everything that was discussed this morning.”

Szijjártó noted that Hungary's peace mission had carried on throughout its EU presidency, but added that serious efforts still needed to be made. The minister also said that on Wednesday afternoon he had consulted with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who is in charge of energy affairs, and that they had sorted out the legal solutions that will allow Hungarian-Russian energy cooperation, and thus the security of Hungary's energy supply, to be maintained in the future.