On November 10, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán claimed that U.S. lobbying was significant in preventing Ukraine from signing a peace deal with Russia shortly after the conflict between the two countries intensified in February 2022.
Speaking with the national Kossuth Rádió, Orbán agreed with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that the U.S. had undermined the Istanbul peace talks in March 2022.
“What the former German chancellor said is a well-known fact in the world of diplomacy,” Orbán said. “And we also know this from all kinds of reports and intelligence sources, that indeed in 2022 in Istanbul, where all kinds of covert negotiations took place, there was essentially an agreement, which — so says the diplomatic rumor — the Ukrainians did not sign on American instructions.”
In an interview last month, Schroeder told the newspaper Berliner Zeitung that the Ukrainians “were not allowed to” make peace, as they “first had to ask the Americans about everything.”
Moreover, Orbán highlighted that Europe had been attempting to contain the Ukraine conflict since the 2014 Crimean crisis, via ways such as the Minsk agreements.
“The Americans entered this game, and since then the direction is not isolation and localization, but expansion. More and more people are getting involved, more and more weapons are being delivered, more and more money is being spent, the Europeans are taking out more and more loans and sending them over to Ukraine, so I have to say that the conflict is becoming globalized,” the Hungarian leader said.
In May 2022, the Kyiv-based Ukrayinska Pravda reported that Boris Johnson, who was the British prime minister at the time, served as a messenger for the West when he visited Kyiv the previous month, “almost without warning.”
Johnson allegedly told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky that there could be no talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that even if Ukraine was open for some sort of deal with Russia, the West was not.
Recently, Johnson was hired by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a Washington-based think tank funded by the U.S. government, NATO, and Western military contractors, due to his “commitment to Ukraine’s victory.” Military-industrial complex firms such as BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Leonardo, as well as NATO, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. European Command, have been listed as supporters on the CEPA site.
In an interview with news outlet Reuters last week, Zelensky declared that Ukraine will not stop fighting Russia until it recaptures all the territories it considers its own, with a withdrawal of U.S. support not impacting Kyiv’s stance in this aspect.
When questioned if he was “worried” about potential amendments to U.S. foreign policy should Donald Trump emerge victorious in the 2024 U.S. presidential elections, Zelensky responded that Ukraine would continue its conflict with Russia without U.S. military and financial assistance.
Trump had previously maintained that he would have a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv worked out “within 24 hours” if elected in 2024. In turn, Zelensky dismissed such statements by Trump as an attempt to “fix” the conflict for himself, allegedly with no concern for the “price” Ukraine would have to pay.
“If it will change your foreign policy, what can I say? Ok, we will fight without you,” Zelensky said, alleging that continuing Ukraine’s drawn-out conflict with Moscow is the will of the Ukrainian people. The Ukrainian leader then proceeded to claim that the only “real way to stop the war” was for Russian forces to pull out from all the territories claimed by Kyiv. Zelensky also maintained that he was certain that Moscow’s troops “will do it,” without providing more details.
Additionally, the Ukrainian leader posited that “any” U.S. president would help Ukraine if they knew “all the challenges and the result and the damage of the war.”
Earlier, in another interview with broadcaster NBC on November 5, Zelensky invited Trump to Ukraine, pledging to persuade the former American president in just “24 minutes” that he would be unable to strike any agreements with Russia. Trump declined Zelensky’s invite in a written statement to U.S. media outlet Newsmax.
Such a trip would create “a conflict of interest” at a time when Joe Biden’s administration was officially dealing with Kyiv, Trump declared.
