Orbán lauds Trump as 'the peace advocate,' speculates Biden's likely election loss

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary effectively endorsed Donald Trump for president in an interview and, on the eve of this week’s NATO summit, blasted the United States for having a “war policy” in Ukraine rather than a strategy for achieving peace.

Orbán contrasted U.S. policy unfavorably with what he described as a credible “peace plan” from China. The Hungarian leader met recently with Vladimir Putin and defended his outreach to the Russian autocrat as a practical necessity during the war.

Orbán's comments came in an interview Sunday with Axel Springer media outlets. POLITICO is owned by Axel Springer.

In the interview, Orbán commented extensively on Trump and U.S. politics, predicting there was a “very, very high chance” that President Joe Biden would not be reelected and describing that as a positive outcome.

“I’m sure that a change would be good for the world,” Orbán said, cautioning that he did not want to intrude too much into the American election — despite doing just that.

Orbán, who is widely distrusted by fellow European leaders for his pro-Russian views and autocratic tendencies, praised Trump in generous terms as a “self-made man” who has a “different approach to everything.”

“I believe that will be good for the world politics,” Orbán said, adding of Trump: “He is the man of peace. Under his four-year term he did not initiate a single war, and he did a lot in order to create peace in old conflicts in very complicated areas of the world.”

He further criticized the Biden administration’s stance toward the Russia-Ukraine war, calling for Europe to stop copying American foreign policy while predicting an increasingly bloody conflict in the coming months.

In recent months, Trump was presented with a plan that would aim to bring the war to an end. Ukraine would be pushed to negotiate peace or risk losing U.S. support, according to the plan. Russia would also be incentivized to seek an end to the war, as Washington threatens to boost military assistance to Kyiv.

Asked what he thinks about the potential Trump plan, Orbán said, “I think new leadership will provide new chances.”

His comments come less than a week after his talks with Putin, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Hungarian leader said that peace is possible in the conflict when all the major players — the United States, China, Europe and the countries at war — decide to come to the negotiating table.

It’s largely Washington’s fault that such talks haven’t happened, said Orbán, who recently assumed the European Union presidency, a six-month post that will allow Orbán to bring attention to Budapest’s foreign policy priorities..

“China has a peace plan. America runs a war policy,” he said. “And Europe, instead of having our autonomous strategic approach and position, we are simply copying the American position.”

Orbán came under fire from European politicians for his meeting with Putin in Moscow last week. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen accused the Hungarian leader of appeasing Putin, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said there’s no signs that Putin wants to engage in a peace deal, and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said Orbán “in no way represents the EU or the EU’s positions.”

But Orbán defended his meetings, saying that someone has to step up to engage diplomatically with all sides to end the war — while admitting that Russia started it.

“The job for me now is not to say … who is good, who is bad. The situation is obvious,” he said, explicitly stating that Russia invaded Ukraine. “But I would not like to be indulged [in] a kind of measurement, who is responsible for what, and so on. My duty is to concentrate on how we can create peace.”

If there’s no progress on peace soon, Orbán said, many more soldiers on both sides will die, he added.

In the months leading up to the U.S. presidential election in November, the front line “will be far worse than it was up to now,” he said, explaining that both Putin and Zelenskyy are confident they can win the war and are digging in. “Believe me that the forthcoming two, three months will be far more brutal than we think.”