Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, has met President Xi of China on the third leg of his quixotic one-man mission to bring peace to Ukraine.
Orban, who holds the rotating presidency of the European Union’s council of leaders but whose efforts have been disavowed by the EU itself, landed in Beijing on Monday morning after visits to Kyiv and Moscow.
“Peace mission 3.0,” was his official caption under the social media photograph of his arrival. He added: “China is a key power in creating the conditions for peace in the Russia-Ukraine war. This is why I came to meet with President Xi in Beijing, just two months after his official visit to Budapest.”
China said it was neutral on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and that it was not allowing arms sales to either side, but Xi has refused western requests to stop exports of machine tools and electronic equipment to Moscow’s weapons factories. He has also used the crisis to deepen trade and security ties to Russia and its allies, including in Europe.
Orban is one such ally, having signed a security pact with Beijing in February and promising Xi to allow more investment in Hungary when the Chinese leader visited Budapest in May.
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He has repeatedly riled fellow EU and Nato leaders by rejecting their hostility to President Putin’s Russia, particularly since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
He has resisted — though eventually given in to — the EU’s policy of ratcheting up sanctions on Russia over the war.
He has also backed China’s insistence that outside powers can and should take a positive stance with both sides on Ukraine to bring about a peace deal.
“The international community should create conditions and provide assistance for the two sides to resume direct dialogue and negotiations,” Xi told Orban on Monday, according to Chinese state media.
“Only when all major powers exert positive energy rather than negative energy can the dawn of a ceasefire in this conflict appear as soon as possible.”
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Putin has made it a condition of peace talks that Ukraine abandon attempts to reclaim four provinces in the east of the country where Russia has declared sovereignty after seizing all or partial control.
Xi has made recognition of territorial integrity a pillar of his own 12-part plan for a peace deal, but he has not said how he would reconcile this principle with Putin’s claims to Ukrainian territory.
Orban’s visit, which occurred without prior public announcement, follows on from Friday’s similarly secret trip to Moscow to meet Putin, and Xi’s own visit to Hungary in May.
The EU issued a harshly worded statement denouncing Orban’s visit to Moscow. “Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s visit to Moscow takes place, exclusively, in the framework of the bilateral relations between Hungary and Russia,” it said.
“Prime Minister Orban has not received any mandate from the EU Council to visit Moscow. The EU position on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is reflected in many European Council conclusions. That position excludes official contacts between the EU and President Putin.”
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President Zelensky also rejected the idea Orban was an acceptable mediator to the conflict, saying only countries with more powerful militaries and economies than Russia could successfully manage the task.
“Are there many such countries around the world? Not many. I believe the US and China are such countries. And the EU, not one country, but the whole EU. This could really be an intermediary mission,” the Ukrainian president told a news conference on a visit to Poland.
“Even if [Putin] meets with a particular state, this does not mean he wants to end the war.”
Xi almost certainly sees Orban less as a harbinger of peace in Europe than as a useful friend inside the EU and Nato, as China seeks to keep the alliances’ challenge to its policies on everything from Taiwan to electric vehicle exports at bay.
Xi has been particularly successful in positioning himself to countries outside the western bloc as both an ally against American and European “hegemony” and as a more stable and useful friend than the capricious Putin.
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Last week, Xi made visits to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan in central Asia, and attended a summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a grouping of Eurasian states.
In what appears to be a further calculated challenge to Nato, Chinese state media trumpeted the start of joint military exercises in Belarus, the former Soviet state which borders both Ukraine and prominent Nato members that are hostile to Russia, like Poland and Lithuania. The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, is Putin’s closest political friend.
“Operation Eagle Assault”, which began on Monday less than five miles from the border with Poland and 30 miles from the border with Ukraine, represents the first time China has sent troops to Belarus. The exercises will focus on “hostage rescue and counter-terror operations”, state media reported.
They coincide with celebrations of Nato’s 75th anniversary being marked at a summit in Washington starting on Tuesday.
