MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS/. The Kremlin has no expectations from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s visit to Kiev, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"We don’t expect anything and it’s probably not up to us to comment on the issue," he told reporters in response to a question.
"Hungary has taken the Presidency [of the Council] of the EU and it clearly has to perform its duties. This is why I think that in this particular case, the focus will be on [Orban’s] obligations with regard to Brussels’ interests rather than Hungary’s national interests," the Kremlin spokesman added.
Peskov stressed, however, that "Orban is well known as a politician who knows how to defend his country’s interests in quite a tough manner."
The Hungarian prime minister’s Spokesman Bertalan Havasi said earlier that Orban had arrived in Kiev in the morning for talks with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. This is the Hungarian prime minister’s first visit to Kiev after the start of military activities in Ukraine. Unlike the leaders of other EU countries, he opposes weapons supplies to Ukraine and calls for resolving the conflict peacefully.
Earlier, the Hungarian government said that the time was not right yet for Orban’s visit to Kiev and his full-fledged meeting with Zelensky because much depended on the situation of the Hungarian ethnic minority in Ukraine. Kiev promised to meet Budapest’s demands on the matter. At Hungary’s insistence, they were included in a framework document on the launch of Ukraine’s EU accession talks.