����ֱ��

BUDAPEST: Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday celebrated his country’s status as the host of upcoming talks between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, a meeting where the two leaders are expected to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine.
Trump on Thursday announced his second meeting this year with Putin a day before he was to sit down with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. A date for the meeting has not been set, but Trump said it would take place in Hungary’s capital, Budapest, and suggested it could happen in about two weeks.
Hungary opposes the West’s support of Ukraine
Speaking to state radio on Friday, Orbán, a close Trump ally and considered Putin’s closest partner in the European Union, suggested that his long-standing opposition to the West supplying Ukraine with military and financial aid for its defense against Russia’s invasion had played a role in making Budapest the site of the talks.
“Budapest is essentially the only place in Europe today where such a meeting could be held, primarily because Hungary is almost the only pro-peace country,” Orbán said. “For three years, we have been the only country that has consistently, openly, loudly and actively advocated for peace.”
Orbán, who has often taken an adversarial stance against Ukraine and Zelensky, has consistently portrayed his position as pro-peace, while casting his European partners that favor assisting Kyiv in its defense as warmongers. Yet Orbán’s critics view Hungary’s position as favoring the aggressor in the war and splintering European unity in the face of Russian threats.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hungary, a NATO member, has refused to supply Ukraine with weapons or allow their transfer across its borders. Orbán has threatened to veto certain EU sanctions against Moscow and held up the bloc’s adoption of major funding packages to Kyiv.
Meanwhile, Hungary has actively resisted weaning off of Russian fossil fuels that help fund Moscow’s war, and, in contrast to almost all of the EU’s other 26 countries, has even increased its supplies since the 2022 invasion.
Organizing a meeting with Putin is complicated
The meeting in Budapest comes after Trump failed to secure an agreement to end the war in Ukraine during an August meeting with Putin in Alaska. Falling short of his campaign pledge to quickly stop the bloodshed, Trump rolled out the red carpet for the man who started it.
A trip to Budapest for Putin would require him flying through the airspace of several NATO member countries, a potential complicating factor in organizing the meeting. Hungary is also a signatory to the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, which in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes. As a signatory, Orbán’s government would be required to arrest Putin if he set foot on Hungarian soil.
However, Orbán said in April that his country would begin the process of withdrawing from the court after he gave red carpet treatment in Budapest to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also faced an ICC warrant on suspicion of crimes against humanity.
Budapest holds symbolic significance
Budapest hosting the Trump-Putin meeting also holds symbolic significance: It was in the Hungarian capital in 1994 that the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia granted Ukraine assurances of sovereignty and territorial integrity in exchange for Kyiv giving up its nuclear weapons.
Yet for many Ukrainians, the Budapest Memorandum has become a symbol of promises that carried no weight after Moscow shredded the agreement first with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and then with the full-scale invasion in 2022.
On Friday, Orbán said he’d spoken to Trump on Thursday evening and would speak directly with Putin on Friday morning. Set to face the most challenging election of his last 15 years in power in April, Orbán said that while the upcoming negotiations in Budapest were “not about Hungary,” the capital’s hosting of the meeting could be viewed as a personal political success.
“God knows when was the last time there was such an important diplomatic event in Hungary, where we are not simply hosts, but it is also considered a political achievement,” he said.

PESHAWAR: Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed in a suicide attack near the Afghan border on Friday, Pakistani security officials said, amid a fragile ceasefire between Islamabad and Kabul that paused days of intense fighting between the former allies this month.
The South Asian neighbors engaged in fierce ground fighting, and Pakistan also launched airstrikes across their contested frontier, killing dozens and wounding hundreds, before they reached a 48-hour truce that is due to end at 1300 GMT on Friday.
The soldiers were killed in an attack by militants on a Pakistani military camp in north Waziristan, which also left 13 injured, five security officials said.
While one militant rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into the boundary wall of a fort that served as a military camp, two others tried to get into the facility and were shot dead, they said.
Pakistan’s army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Militant violence in Pakistan has been a major irritant in its relationship with the Afghan Taliban, which returned to power in Kabul after the departure of US-led forces in 2021.
The latest conflict between the two countries was triggered after Islamabad demanded that Kabul rein in militants who had stepped up attacks in Pakistan, saying they operated from havens in Afghanistan.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Thursday that Pakistan “retaliated” as it lost patience with Afghanistan following a series of militant attacks, but was ready to hold talks to resolve the conflict.
The Taliban denies the charge and accuses the Pakistani military of spreading misinformation about Afghanistan, provoking border tensions, and sheltering Daesh-linked militants to undermine its stability and sovereignty.
Islamabad denies the accusations.
Although the Islamic nations have clashed in the past, the fighting this month is their worst in decades. It has drawn the attention of ����ֱ�� and Qatar, who have mediated and sought to stop the fighting.
US President Donald Trump has said he can help resolve the conflict.