Summit of superpowers in Hungary is a huge boon for Viktor Orban and a major humiliation for the EU.
Donald Trump’s announcement that he will meet Vladimir Putin in Budapest to discuss Ukraine will be felt as a painful blow in Europe.
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, must feel like the cat who got the cream.
Often derided as Putin’s closest ally in the European Union (EU), Mr Orban has regularly clashed with Volodymyr Zelensky and railed against Western sanctions over the illegal invasion of Ukraine.
He has repeatedly broken ranks with his allies in Nato and the EU, where summits on Ukraine now routinely end with conclusions agreed by all except Hungary in a breach of convention.
Relations with president Zelensky are at sub-zero. Mr Orban has vowed to block Ukraine’s accession to the EU and accuses Kyiv of persecuting the Hungarian ethnic minority.
In August, Ukraine hit a key Russian pipeline carrying oil to Kremlin-dependent Hungary, which repeatedly demanded immediate peace negotiations in a war it says Kyiv can never win.
But, crucially, Mr Orban has never fallen out with Donald Trump since nailing his colours firmly to his Maga mast when he won his first term in office.
He remained loyal during Mr Trump’s “exile” between terms, a period in which he clashed with Joe Biden, the former US president. He became a darling of US conservatives, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference and hosting the summit in Budapest.
Mr Orban was the only EU leader to endorse Mr Trump before he was re-elected.
Mr Biden warned that Mr Trump would “Orbanise” the US, comparing the Fidesz leader to a dictator over a crackdown on the media and gay rights.
Once back in the White House, some of Mr Trump’s new policies took inspiration from Hungary, including the law that there could be only two genders.
Mr Trump has already endorsed Mr Orban ahead of elections in 2026.
The Hungarian has styled himself as a campaigner for peace and this summit of superpowers is a huge feather in the cap for a leader of a small country of just 9.5 million people.
That will be a blow for those in the EU who were hoping Mr Orban could be unseated by Peter Magyar, the pro-EU conservative, who has a lead over the bloc’s longest-serving leader in the polls.
Mr Orban has relished his role as the bad boy of Brussels, founding a pan-EU group of Eurosceptic parties dedicated to reclaiming national powers from the European Commission.
He has clashed with EU judges over his tough anti-immigration policies, which included forcing migrants to stay in transit zones between border fences.
He enraged EU allies with a “peace mission” to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing last year, breaking the taboo of meeting Putin in person.
European diplomats were at pains to insist that Mr Orban was not talking on the EU’s behalf, despite Hungary holding the six-month presidency of the bloc.
Brussels thought it had its revenge in late September when Mr Trump upbraided the EU for continuing to buy Russian oil. European envoys wasted no time in pointing out that Russia’s biggest customer was Hungary.
Hungary signed a new energy deal with Russia after the invasion, arguing it had no choice because the country is landlocked. They had demanded carve-outs from EU sanctions on Russian energy but have now started negotiations with other suppliers under US pressure.
The choice of Hungary for the summit will have wiped the smile off the EU’s face.
The bloc has been largely sidelined in the Ukraine peace talks and is smarting at the peripheral role it played in the Gaza peace plan.
This will hurt Kyiv as well. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for meaningless guarantees from Russia to respect its sovereignty, independence and borders.
It certainly helps that Hungary announced it was withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC) this year after it issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu.
The ICC also has a war crimes warrant out for Putin, which requires signatories to arrest the Russian leader if he enters their territory.
That will not be an issue in Hungary, which has forged ties with other Trump allies such as Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil.
A country that almost all EU members and institutions have ostracised has now been given centre-stage by Mr Trump, who believes the bloc was set up to “screw” the US.
At the Gaza summit in Egypt this week, he sought out Mr Orban from the stage. “We love Viktor. You are fantastic, alright? I know a lot of people don’t agree with me, but I’m the only one that matters,” Mr Trump said, standing in front of European leaders, including Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, and Sir Kier Starmer.
The US president has no reason to disbelieve Mr Orban’s accusations that the EU is intent on imposing its woke and globalist values on Hungary.
Giving Mr Orban the gift of the peace summit isn’t just a reward for loyalty, it will also boost the White House’s drive to take Maga global.
It has the added advantage of “triggering the libs” in the EU and beyond.
