PM Orbán about the Hungarian ceasefire proposal and Trump’s flying start in January – UPDATED
Change language:
“At Christmas at least, no one should die on the front line,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday, outlining his recent proposal to the warring Russian and Ukrainian sides regarding a ceasefire.
Orbán said that at Hungary’s initiative an offer was on the table, and the sides may also “agree on an exchange of prisoners of war at last, which would make hundreds of thousands of people happy”.
“One side has accepted the proposal while the other apparently rejects it, but still there are a few days until Christmas, so let’s hope that the situation can change,” the prime minister added.
“While we swim in international waters, the Hungarian pool is paramount; we must keep that tidy, first and foremost,” Orbán said. The 2025 budget is taking its final shape, giving an outlook for families and businesses for the next year, he added.
Orbán said Hungarian diplomacy had gone above and beyond to attempt to gain a “few days of a ceasefire” as was befitting “a thousand-year-old Christian European state”.
Orbán spoke with the Americans, the Russians, the Europeans, the Turks
The prime minister noted that he had spoken with “the Americans, the Russians, the Europeans, the Turks”, and he was positive that once Donald Trump took office the world would make an about-turn.
“We’re still in perilous times: the governments in Germany and France have failed and Syria, the biggest source of migration in the past decade, has seen it’s government toppled,” he said.
He added, however, that no longer would “we have to navigate stormy seas” and “calmer waters lie before us”.
Orbán said it would only take “a day or two after January 20” for the about-turn to take place, because “the new administration in America will get off to a flying start”, and the changes would soon reach Europe on issues “that are also most important to us”.
Romania, Bulgaria Schengen Zone membership “fantastic achievement”
The prime minister called Romania and Bulgaria’s accession to the Schengen zone a “fantastic” achievement, adding that Romania’s accession had been long awaited by ethnic Hungarians and was “a crucial step for the unity of the Hungarian nation”. In the interview, Orbán said this achievement was owing to the efforts of interior minister Sándor Pintér and European affairs minister János Bóka.
Orbán said big European countries had blocked their accession, and removing the obstacle had been “no small diplomatic feat”.
He added that Hungarians in Transylvania had looked forward to Schengen accession for a long time, and now they could travel without barriers in the way.
Romanians, too, had wanted it, so a “sunny afternoon” had emerged in the history of stormy Romanian-Hungarian relations. He added that Romania “knows this and has been constructive”.
After a transitional period, “we can remove our police” from the Romanian-Hungarian border, he said, adding that the would relieve law enforcement of staffing problems.
Attempt to involve Hungary in the Syrian conflict
Meanwhile, Orbán said an attempt had been made to “involve Hungary in a hot conflict” by concocting and spreading a story that would put Hungary in the cross hairs. He told public radio that the “fake news” regarding Syrian President Assad’s appearance in Budapest had been “the most important event of the week” and the most “painful”.
Orbán noted that during the first phase of the Syrian civil war around 2015, a massive migration and terror wave “swept through Europe” and hundreds of people had died in Europe.
“So what’s going on in Syria and its impact on Europe is not … a joke or fake news that can be spread; this could get bloody,” he said.