What Viktor Orbán Brought To Mar-A-Lago On Thursday

Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán is set to meet with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday evening, sidestepping the White House after a week of travel to Ukraine, Russia, China, and Azerbaijan.

Orbán himself framed the trip in grandiose terms, saying that it was a peace mission while comparing himself at one point to the French leader who brokered an end to Russia and Georgia’s 2008 war.

But fragments of what Orbán learned and advocated on his trip to the countries have emerged over the past week. Apart from burnishing his own image as an erstwhile international peacemaker, the trip is the latest example of Orbán trying to align his country with the MAGA side of American partisan politics. In this case, it could mean preparing the ground to push the Ukrainians into a deal that falls dramatically short of their stated desires before a victorious Trump takes power.

“I put forward the idea that a new president-elect will face pressure to present a rapid political outcome, even before taking office,” Orbán told European officials, per Spanish newspaper El País. “A ceasefire that precedes the peace talks, as well as rapid and intense peace talks, could be of interest to a new administration.”

There’s no sign that the Ukrainian leadership is open to such a deal; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Orbán’s efforts.

But the looming, potential election of Donald Trump in November could completely change the calculus for Ukraine, which depends on Washington for military and intelligence support. A plan created by two Trump allies that the GOP candidate has reportedly reviewed would see his administration cut off aid to Ukraine; that’s certainly an inducement for Kyiv to take what it can get.

Orbán is making the trip to Mar-a-Lago after assuming the role of rotating president of the EU, typically a ceremonial position. Orbán’s slogan for that position is “Make Europe Great Again.”

There’s a domestic policy component to this, as well. When Orbán won reelection in a landslide in 2014, he promised to transform Hungary into an “illiberal state.” He’s largely succeeded in doing that: under his leadership, Orbán stacked the country’s constitutional court, reined in the free press, and, according to international monitors, made extensive use of state resources to sway elections in his favor.

Orbán and those around him have also deepened ties with Trumpworld over the past several years. The Heritage Foundation (of Project 2025 fame) recently signed a cooperation agreement with the Danube Institute, an Orbán-aligned Budapest think tank. The National Conservatism conference this week hosted Orbán’s political director alongside the heads of Trump-aligned think tanks and reactionary influencers.

But Thursday’s Mar-a-Lago trip parallels that cross-pollination only in that it potentially offers Trump a blueprint for bringing an end to the Ukraine war. In Orbán’s own telling, it’s to do with giving the Trump campaign a foreign policy boost.

“I think new leadership will provide new chances,” Orbán said this week, referring to the U.S. election, while calling Trump a “man of peace.”

The trip began in Kyiv, where, per Ukrainian press, Orbán proposed that Ukraine make the first step towards peace by ordering its soldiers to stop firing.

“I asked Zelensky to think about whether it wouldn’t be possible to do things differently: cease firing first, and then hold peace talks,” Orbán said. “Because ceasing fire could guarantee that these talks would go faster.”

Orbán later traveled to Moscow, where he said that he spent more than three hours speaking with Vladimir Putin. Fortunately for us, Orbán brought a journalist from a right-wing Swiss magazine on the plane with him, who posted an English-language interview with the Hungarian leader.

After the first question (what’s it like talking to someone with so many nukes?), Orbán said that he was trying to find the “shortest and quickest way” to peace, and that he believed another round of peace talks would begin before the end of this year.

He also said that he pitched the idea of holding a ceasefire before beginning negotiations, but Putin indicated that he was not “optimistic” about the proposal.

Both Ukraine and Russia have released public-facing versions of their conditions for ending the war since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukraine wants Russia to withdraw troops back to the 1991 borders and to receive reparations for all of the damage wrought, along with war crimes tribunals; Russia demands that Ukraine retreat far beyond lines it currently holds, giving Russia full control of four of its regions while renouncing its NATO aspirations.

The two sides did hold peace negotiations in Istanbul in the first weeks and months of the war; those ended in mid-April 2022. Per a New York Times report, the final drafts included an agreement to exclude the status of Crimea, a concession that Ukraine would renounce its NATO ambitions, but got stuck on a provision by which Russia would be able to veto security guarantees provided to Ukraine.

Per Orbán, Putin said that he was open to picking up where the Istanbul negotiations left off. Izvestia, a leading Russian newspaper, reported that Orbán could “pass information he has collected to Trump’s team.”