BERLIN, June 27. /TASS/. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he believed that Ukraine was no longer a sovereign state and any potential peace settlement of the conflict in the country would depend largely on the United States, and not on Ukraine itself.

"Ukraine is no longer a sovereign state. It has neither money nor weapons. It can keep on fighting only thanks to the assistance being provided," Orban said in an interview with German daily Bild. "It’s up to the United States to decide when peace will materialize."

"The reality is that cooperation between Ukraine and the West has failed," he continued. "In my view, the fact that Ukrainians keep fighting on the battlefronts, while we support them financially, and with data and hardware, and [the idea] that they will be able to win this war against Russia, [I believe] that this is an incorrect understanding of the situation. That outcome [a Ukrainian victory] is not possible."

The Hungarian premier said that if full-fledged negotiations had been conducted at the very beginning of the conflict, countless casualties could have been avoided.

"My stance from the very start has been that we should not allow this conflict to be transformed into a global war, or something on that scale, but rather the conflict should have been isolated and the responsibility for it shifted away from the military brass and onto the politicians and diplomats, because this war should never have happened," the Hungarian prime minister emphasized.

Orban also stated that it was imperative to return to the negotiating table as peace talks represent the only means of saving lives.