The Washington Post-Putin meets Viktor Orban in China in a boost for the Kremlin
October 17, 2023 3 min 637 words
这篇报道强调了俄罗斯总统普京在乌克兰战争持续孤立的情况下与匈牙利总理欧尔班在中国会晤，这是自国际刑事法院今年三月发布针对普京战争罪名的逮捕令以来，普京首次与欧盟领导人会面。会面中，欧尔班表态继续与俄罗斯保持亲密关系，尽管欧洲与俄罗斯之间因乌克兰战争而紧张。 这一举动显然会激怒北约和欧盟伙伴，因为欧尔班一直在试图削弱欧洲对普京的孤立，并反对对俄罗斯的制裁。美国驻匈牙利大使戴维·普雷斯曼在社交媒体上批评了这次会面，指出匈牙利“是我们盟友中唯一选择与那些在乌克兰犯下危害人类罪行的人站在一起的国家”。 这次会晤突显了在国际政治舞台上，现实政治和经济利益往往会超过道义原则。对于普京和欧尔班来说，继续保持亲密关系可能对各自国家的经济和能源安全至关重要，但这也引发了国际社会的担忧，因为这有可能削弱对俄罗斯的国际制裁和孤立政策。 这个会晤的背景是乌克兰战争仍在继续，而国际社会对此问题的立场仍然不一。这也凸显了国际关系中的复杂性和角力，以及不同国家之间在追求国家利益和维护国际道义之间的平衡。
2023-10-17T14:32:22.346Z
RIGA, Latvia — Russian President Vladimir Putin, increasingly isolated over the war against Ukraine, met Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in China on Tuesday.
The meeting was Putin’s first with a European Union leader since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in March, accusing him of war crimes in the forced deportations of Ukrainian children.
Orban, a self-proclaimed proponent of “illiberal” Christian democracy, has a cozy relationship with Putin and Tuesday declared his determination to maintain his ties with Moscow, despite the tensions between Europe and Russia over the nearly two-year-old war.
Orban has irritated other NATO members by slow-walking Sweden’s accession to the alliance and his refusal to fully support Ukraine.
Putin quickly crowed about the significance of the encounter, in which the two men shook hands and then held private talks ahead of a summit in Beijing marking the 10th anniversary of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a giant global infrastructure program.
“Despite the fact that in today’s geopolitical conditions the opportunities for maintaining contacts and developing relations are very limited, it nevertheless cannot but cause satisfaction that our relations with many European countries are maintained and developed,” Putin said.
Relations between Hungary and Russia rely “on everything positive that we have inherited from the past,” Putin added, shrugging off his isolation in the West.
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Orban, who has been in power since 2010, reaffirmed his close relations with Putin.
“Hungary has never wanted to confront Russia,” he said. “On the contrary, Hungary’s goal has always been to establish and mutually expand the best contacts. And we succeeded,” he said.
But he conceded that Hungary’s ties with Russia had been under pressure due to the war, saying, “We have never been in such a difficult situation before.” According to Putin, trade between the two nations increased by 80 percent last year but declined by 35 percent in 2023.
“We’re trying to salvage what we can from our bilateral contacts,” Orban said, calling Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom, which has a permit to build two nuclear reactors in Hungary, “our excellent partner.”
Much of Europe has sought to sever financial ties with Russia, but Orban on Tuesday explicitly spelled out his desire to continue doing business with Russia “as long as this is possible,” and the two leaders discussed cooperation in the oil-and-gas shipments and nuclear energy.
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Orban’s warm meeting with Putin is likely to deepen the frustration among NATO and E.U. partners over his steady attempts to undermine Europe’s isolation of Putin and his opposition to E.U. sanctions against Russia over the war.
U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman sharply criticized the meeting in a post on X, formerly Twitter, saying that Hungary “alone among our Allies” chose to stand “with a man whose forces are responsible for crimes against humanity in Ukraine.”
“While Russia strikes Ukrainian civilians,” Pressman wrote, “Hungary pleads for business deals.”
In a dig at European sanctions on Russia, Orban griped that his work in developing Russian ties was under pressure. “No one likes it when the results of his work, once achieved, are nullified due to reasons for which he is not at all to blame,” he said.
Orban’s office has in the past declared that Hungary would not arrest Putin were he to visit, even though the nation is a signatory to the Rome Statute that set up the International Criminal Court.
A number of senior Russian officials were present at the meeting including Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov; the head of Rosatom, Alexei Likhachev; and the chairman of Gazprom, the state-controlled energy company, Alexei Miller.