Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Thursday said he supports China's peace proposal for ending Russia's war against Ukraine.
Orbán, one of the few leaders in NATO who is sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin, made the endorsement of the peace plan while meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Budapest.
China's Foreign Ministry released the country's 12-point peace plan on February 24, 2023, to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. In the proposal, Beijing details a "political settlement" of the war by calling on both sides to respect the nations' sovereignty, safeguard nuclear sites and protect prisoners of war, among other points.
"Today, Europe is on the side of war," Orbán said during a joint press conference with Xi. "The only exception is Hungary, which calls for an immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations and supports all international efforts that point towards peace ... We also support the Chinese peace initiative presented by Xi Jinping."
Xi, like Orbán, has remained one of Putin's closest allies throughout the Russian invasion. Putin and Xi have publicly vowed to further deepen ties between their countries on multiple instances in the past two years, while American officials have recently claimed goods exported from China to Russia have supported Moscow's defense industrial base.
During a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday, Xi took issue with accusations that he is aiding Russia's war efforts.
"China is neither the creator of the crisis, nor a party to it or a participant. But we are also not a bystander, we have always been actively contributing to reaching peace," Xi said. "We also oppose using the Ukraine crisis to shed responsibility or defame a third country and provoke a new Cold War."
On Thursday, Orbán also painted China as a peace-promoting nation, calling it "one of the pillars of the new world order."
Newsweek reached out to Orbán's office via email on Thursday night for further comment.
While some Western observers called China's peace plan vague upon its release, Russia has signaled an openness to considering it.
According to Kremlin-operated news agency RIA Novosti, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the Chinese proposal "reasonable" while speaking with reporters last month.
"The most important thing for us is that the Chinese document is based on an analysis of the reasons for what is happening and the need to eliminate these root causes. It is structured in logic from the general to the specific," Lavrov said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with Xi by telephone two months after China's proposal was released. Though he didn't mention the peace plan, the Ukrainian leader spoke of the one-hour conversion in positive terms.
"I had a long and meaningful phone call with President Xi Jinping," Zelensky wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on April 26, 2023. "I believe that this call, as well as the appointment of Ukraine's ambassador to China, will give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations."
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Jon Jackson is an Associate Editor at Newsweek based in New York. His focus is on reporting on the Ukraine ... Read more
