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Orban the first Western leader visiting Russia since April 2022

In late April 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres came to the Kremlin to meet with the Russian leader

MOSCOW, July 5. /TASS/. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban’s visit has become the first visit to Russia made by a Western leader since April 2022, and his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin are currently underway behind closed doors, a TASS correspondent reported from the Kremlin.

After the special military operation began in February 2022, only one EU leader has travelled to Russia for talks with Putin. It was Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer who visited Moscow on April 11, 2022.

As for Orban, it is not his first visit to Moscow over the last two years, but his previous trip - on September 3, 2022 - was private, as he attended the farewell ceremony for former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, but he did not meet with the Russian president then. However, Putin and Orban held a meeting on the sidelines of the Belt and Road forum in Beijing in October 2023.

After the start of the special military operation, then Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet came to Moscow in March 2022 for talks on the Ukraine crisis. In late April 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres came to the Kremlin to meet with Putin.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS that the talks between Putin and Orban involve delegations, but "if the leaders deem it necessary, they can always switch into a tet-a-tet mode."

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No further details were provided