BRUSSELS — Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda hit out at Viktor Orbán for having met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, calling out the Hungarian prime minister for flirting with Moscow just before the two men were about to sit around the same summit table.
“It’s really strange to see that we start to flirt with a regime who is committing … very cruel atrocities on the territory of Ukraine,” Nausėda said as he arrived for a summit of EU leaders on Thursday. “It sends a very wrong message to … international society and also to Ukraine who is fighting for their freedom.”
Orbán has been criticized by some in the EU after shaking hands with Putin at a summit in China last week, and doubling down on his continued close ties with Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine.
While Budapest has signed up to the EU’s 11 rounds of sanctions on Moscow, Orbán has continually held up talks and called on the bloc to immediately stop supplying arms to Kyiv, all while cultivating a warm personal relationship with Putin. Lithuania has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters.
“We keep open all the communication lines to the Russians, otherwise there would be no chance for peace,” Orbán said as he entered the summit in Brussels. “This is a strategy — so we are proud of it.”
Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director, said the long-serving Hungarian leader on Thursday would propose that EU leaders “hold a strategic debate” on a “new strategy” on Ukraine at their next meeting in December, saying their current approach of supporting Kyiv “does not work.”
Nausėda’s comments come after Lithuania and Hungary traded barbs over the handshake earlier this week.
At a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday, Lithuania’s Gabrielius Landsbergis took his Hungarian counterpart Péter Szijjártó to task, according to two diplomats who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, asking him whether Budapest’s demands of the EU come from his own government “or from the Kremlin.”
Szijjártó parried back, the diplomats said, arguing that Hungary takes orders from no one.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Nausėda acknowledged Orbán “has a right not to regret” or apologize for his actions.
“But I think it’s regrettable,” he said.
