Viktor Orban Travels to Russia for Meeting With Vladimir Putin

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary arrived in Moscow on Friday, a rare trip to Russia by a Western leader and one that quickly stirred discord in the European Union.

Mr. Orban will meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, days after visiting President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

A spokesman for Mr. Orban, Zoltan Kovacs, said the Hungarian leader was in Moscow “as part of his peace mission.” Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, said the Russian president would discuss Ukraine, “among other things,” with Mr. Orban, “who has flown in for a working visit to Moscow.”

Mr. Orban, long an object of European chagrin for his embrace of far-right politics and of authoritarians like Mr. Putin, has said he wants to promote peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainian leaders have rejected talks with Russia because they say that Mr. Putin would only seek their country’s capitulation.

It was the first time that a European Union leader had visited Russia for an official meeting with Mr. Putin since the first months of the Ukraine invasion. The Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer, made the trip in April 2022.

And it was Mr. Orban’s first meeting with Mr. Putin since October 2023, when the two men sat down on the sidelines of an international summit in Beijing.