Estonia, Luxembourg snipe at Hungary’s Orban over meeting Putin

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban delivers a speech during the celebrations of the 67th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, in Veszprem, Hungary, October 23, 2023. Szilard Koszticsak/Pool via Reuters reuters_tickers

By Gabriela Baczynska and Marine Strauss

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The leaders of Estonia and Luxembourg on Tuesday criticised their European Union peer, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban over his recent encounter with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, which was held to great pomp as Moscow wages a war against Ukraine.

Arriving at a summit of the EU’s 27 national leaders in Brussels, Orban was asked about his meeting with Putin, held this month in China despite EU efforts to isolate Russia over the war.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said she would raise the issue with Orban, and Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel said meeting Putin amounted to “showing the middle finger” to Ukrainians.

Orban said he was “proud” of his strategy.

“We would like to do everything to have peace. Therefore we keep open all the communication lines to the Russians, otherwise there will be no chance for peace,” he told reporters.

The West has extended billions of euros’ worth of financial and military aid to Ukraine and imposed rounds of economic sanctions on Russia since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022.

But Orban has cultivated much closer ties with Moscow than his EU peers and has regularly spoken against the sanctions and threatened the block another 50 billion euros in support promised to Ukraine through 2027.

Speaking on her arrival at the same gathering in Brussels, Estonia’s Kallas reiterated her dismay at Orban shaking hands with Putin whom she called a war criminal, wanted by the International Criminal Court.

“I’m just asking: Why? Why is this really necessary?,” Kallas told reporters. “I wouldn’t want to be in the same picture with such a guy.”

Asked about Orban’s encounter with Putin, Bettel said: “It is really showing the middle finger to a country that suffers daily under Russian missiles and bombs.”

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, Marine Strauss, Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Hugh Lawson and David Gregorio)