ORBAN’S MISSIONS TO KIEV AND MOSCOW
The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, recently visited Kiev and Moscow in an effort to get some sort of peace process and negotiation started between the Russian Federation and the Ukraine, according to this story shared by E.G.:
Putin Tells Orban Moscow Ready For 'Complete & Final End' To Ukraine War
There is some telling language associated with this visit, language that needs close parsing, and typically, it is coming once again from Russian President Vladimir Putin:
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has showed up in Moscow Friday, on a surprise visit to meet with President Vladimir Putin which has at the same time outraged European officials.
Defying the EU, Orban wrote of the trip on X, "The #peace mission continues. Second stop: #Moscow." This "peace mission" comes a mere days after for the first time of the war he visited Kiev and met with President Zelensky to talk about getting the sides to the negotiating table.
What especially makes things awkward for European Union leadership is the fact that Hungary just recently took over the rotating EU presidency.
Putin alluded to this in televised comments, saying that Orban had come to Moscow precisely in this capacity as the top representative of the European Council. This despite a number of European officials having strongly condemned the visit.
"I understand that this time you have come not just as our longstanding partner but as president of the council," Putin told Orban. Putin said he's expecting that Orban will lay out "the position of European partners" on Ukraine(sic et passim).
While Orban had informed NATO about his intention to visit Moscow, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell slammed the visit, saying the PM is "not representing the EU in any form." Borrell emphasized the trip is only in the context of "the framework of... bilateral relations between Hungary and Russia."
Borrell also reminded a press briefing that Putin "has been indicted by the International Criminal Court and an arrest warrant released for his role in relation to the forced deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia."
European Council President Charles Michel also said that Orban has "no mandate to engage with Russia on behalf of the EU." He posted on X just prior to Orban's meeting with Putin, "The European Council is clear: Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim. No discussions about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine." And Ursula von der Leyen has called the visit "appeasement".
What emerges from this summary is that apparently Mr. Putin has returned to the language he customarily used to describe the West prior to the Ukrainian special military operation; he once again described them as "European partners," a rather remarkable statement given the fact that most of the leaders of the rest of Europe are on record - as the article indicates - describing Russia as the aggressor, and insisting that no discussions about the Ukraine can take place "without the Ukraine." This, also, in spite of the fact that after what was apparently a lengthy meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Orban, Mr. Putin made it clear that Russia could more or less end things unilaterally, whether the Ukraine (or for that matter, Europe) wanted it or not:
Putin and Orban's meeting reportedly lasted hours, with Putin emerging from it and telling a press conference he supports "a complete and final end" to the Ukraine conflict rather than "some kind of truce or cease-fire." But he also stressed that for this to happen Ukrainian forces must withdraw from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions - which are the four eastern territories which have been declared part of the Russian Federation.
He said that other terms of a permanent truce are "a subject for consideration." He described, "Russia is committed to the complete and definitive resolution of the conflict. The conditions for this are outlined in my speech (to the Foreign Ministry) – the withdrawal of all troops from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions."
Short of a full scale NATO commitment of troops to the Ukraine - in the form of mercenary volunteers or conscripts from the now-being-considered drafts in the West - there is little the Ukraine can do to stop this militarily, and frankly, I'm not putting much faith in the woke military of the USA.
So, on the one hand, Mr. Putin is talking tough, and clear, and on the other, has revived the use of the term "partners" once again to describe the western leadership, pronouncements from Urusala von der Leyen, or as we like to call her, Medusala von der Lyin', notwithstanding. What's going on?
Time will tell, of course, but my high octane antennae are pulsing with suspicion here (to borrow Sir Laurence Olivier's line from the movie Sleuth). As the article notes, there's lots of huffing and puffing from the "leadership" of the European Union. But as the recent elections in Europe make abundantly clear, the support for Mr. Globaloney's projects and policies is waning... quickly. The fact that the Reform Party in the United Kingdom even gained any seats in the House of Commons is a huge fact and breakthrough, especially considering it started mere weeks ago; Equally huge is the all but total collapse of the British Conservative Party in the final logical end of its ouster of Mrs. Thatcher years ago, not to mention the declining votes for Labour in previous elections up to now (do not be deceived by the number of seats it now has in Commons), means that a political earthquake is underway in Britain (and we've not even mentioned the stunning showing of Marin le Pen in France).
Mr. Putin knows this, and so does Mr. Orban, and so do their advisors. What this means is that the huffing and puffing by Medusala von der Lyin' and her ilk in Europe are just that: huffing and puffing, and from a position of weakness at that. They face a choice, and neither one is terribly palatable to the globalooneyists running Europe: they can now urge the Ukraine to sit at the same table and talk with the Russians and hence lose a whole lot of face, or they can wait, be replaced in a populist upwelling, which will force any new leadership to do precisely the same thing. And meanwhile, as their own intelligence services have been warning, those Russian "horizontal escalations" within their own countries - the explosions and fires at munitions plants and so on - are slowly and gradually increasing. The drones have not dropped on any western leaders - yet - for the simple reason that election results were forcing the Russians to wait and see if they would result in some new governments that could actually act like adults and negotiate, or if they needed to target drones and fire polonium pellets at people other than Frau von der Lyin, M. Macron, and Mr. Sunak.
But whatever the insane globalooneys in Europe may say or think, there's another group that also probably gave the quiet behind-the-scenes green light to Mr. Orban's junket to Kiev and Moscow: business. What must always be remembered while listening to the latest shrieks from Medusala von der Lyin' and her ilk, is that the whole sanctions-confrontation-potential World War III scenario being pushed by Swampington DC and its sprouts in Brussels is that European business and most average Europeans want no part of it; recall only that as the whole confrontation was beginning to ratchet up in the twilight days of Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, that German and Italian businessmen were quietly running off to Moscow to try to deal with Russia directly. The cracks between official policy and the populations or Europe are that old, and the rift is now spilling over into election results.
My point is thus rather easy to understand: Mr. Orban's trip was not simply a one-off, it was not simply a flight of fancy, even less was it Mr. Orban grandstanding or anything of the sort. He merely became the first European political leader to publicly acknowledge what everyone knew as early as the days of the Minsk accords, and which they've been afraid to admit: the whole experiment to bypass Russia and redraw the borders of Eastern Europe without it has been a colossal failure. Don't expect Italy to be far behind, and France is - shockingly - already coming to its senses. Mr. Farage is now in the House of Commons (I'm so looking forward to those sessions of Prime Minister's questions now!)... watch Warsaw and Berlin.
To put all this country simple, there has been a behind-the-scenes change in Europe... time will tell what that means, but if I were Mr. Zelensky, I wouldn't give up on my career as a stand-up comedian just yet.
See you on the flip side...
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