Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán believed Ukraine had lost the war against Russia as he looked ahead to a meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has lost this war,” he said in an interview published by far-right conservative news site mandiner.hu on Wednesday. “The Ukrainians have lost this war; Russia has won the war.”

“We are talking like this was a situation of war with an open end,” the Hungarian leader said, adding that this assessment was false.

Mr Orbán, who has repeatedly vetoed EU sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine, claimed that Kiev would not capitulate as long as it was being supplied with weapons and funds by Western partners.

“Otherwise this war would have been over long ago,” the right-wing politician said.

On Tuesday, Budapest declined to sign a joint statement by its 26 fellow European Union allies welcoming efforts by Mr Trump to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The statement demanded that Ukraine’s territorial integrity be ensured, saying that “international borders must not be changed by force.”

Mr Orbán, justifying his government’s refusal to back the declaration, said it attempted to set conditions for negotiations to which EU leaders were not even invited.

The bilateral meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Putin set to take place in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday has sparked fears in Kiev and the rest of Europe that the two leaders could strike an agreement that would force Ukraine into making territorial concessions, a move that Mr Zelensky has categorically ruled out.

Mr Orbán, in a Facebook post, said it was sad enough that the EU has been pushed to the sidelines.

“The only thing worse will be if we were giving instructions from the sidelines,” he wrote.

(dpa/NAN)