Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said that "Russia has won" the war in Ukraine, ahead of a possible meeting between US President Donald Trump and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday 15 August.

Source : Orbán in an interview with Hungarian media, cited by Reuters and reported by European Pravda

Details : Orbán, the only European Union leader who did not support a joint statement affirming that Ukraine should decide its own future, declared that Russia had "won" the war in Ukraine.

"We are talking now as if this were an open-ended war situation, but it is not. The Ukrainians have lost the war. Russia has won this war," he said.

In the Hungarian prime minister’s opinion, the only question is "when and under what circumstances will the West, who are behind the Ukrainians, admit that this has happened and what will result from all this".

He also said Europe had lost the opportunity to negotiate with Putin under former US president Joe Biden’s administration and now risks having its future decided without its involvement.

"If you are not at the negotiating table, you are on the menu," Orbán said, adding that he was partly opposed to the EU’s joint statement on Ukraine because it made Europe "ridiculous and pathetic".

Background :

• US President Donald Trump expects his meeting with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin in Alaska on 15 August to be "good", but does not rule out negative outcomes.
• Trump also expressed dissatisfaction with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s argument that any territorial exchanges as part of a potential peace deal would require amendments to the constitution.
• For his part, Zelenskyy said ahead of the Trump-Putin meeting that the talks were important for their bilateral track, but could not result in any decisions on Ukraine without a Ukrainian representative present.

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