We have all seen Victor Orban, the only voice that spoke with EU, Ukraine, Russia, China, USA, NATO… Admirable!
I watched with admiration especially to see how he was received at Kremlin! I suspected there was a hug behind the camera not to alienate the Hungarian’s allies. But I do not think there was a hug behind the scene, Victor Orban is not really on Vladimir Putin’s friends list. There is no chemistry between them. Victor Orban displays himself as strong person, as strong as Putin that faces him and deals with him and finds ways to gets his attention, not as a person that admires him sincerely. Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) has a long standing relationship with him because Victor Orban is a prominent figure in Hungary since before 1989. Victor Orban is Hungary’s spokesman for Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Putin is interested in collaborating with anyone who wants to collaborate with Russia in a honest way. Respect, collaboration, professional sincerity that is needed in order to get somewhere, or it may even be that Victor Orban is a FSB (formerKGB) asset, not that warm, and a distance, because Putin likes real patriots, not heartless technocrats and strategists, however successful they may be.
Victor Orban knows that his talks rally would not contribute with anything meaningful to the peace process, this is a futile attempt that put him at odds EU and NATO. I wondered is it really worth it?
If the mission really is the unattainable for the moment “peace”, it was not worth it. He knew before started touring around in Ukraine, Russia, China, US, he knew the talks a far away from negotiations possible, and he knew that Zelensky and Putin were still poles apart and really let us be honest he can not contribute to other than listening to both parties which still is something, but not a lot. So the mission is not “peace”. I will reveal to you what I personally think that the mission is.
This morning I came across on GZERO World YouTube channel, a Ian Bremmer and Polish Foreign (the link is below) Minister Radek Sikorski interview on sidelines about NATO summit and I heard the statement:
“Victor Orban says about himself that he leads the only country in Europe Union that borders on itself”
That means absolutely nothing to you, but for me as Romanian that borders with Hungary, and has a territorial argument with Hungary about Transilvania, for me this is a wound. Let me re-ward it: Romania has no argument with anyone about Transilvania. Transilvania is Romanian territory. It is Hungary that has an argument about Transilvania with Romania because Transilvania had been long ago part of Austro-Hungarian Empire.
So the real motivation of Victor Orban is not the “peace”. Victor Orban wants to make Hungary greater than Hungary can ever be, he wants to restore the Austro-Hungarian Empire and for this he knows he has to get along with Vladimir Putin for two reasons: first reason is that if Russia claims its territories back from Ukraine then all other countries that have historic territories under Ukraine administration can claim them back, so he, by approving indirectly Putin’s territorial claims sends a message to the world, in between the lines, that he wants the Transcarpathia back from Ukraine and second reason is that Russia was always one of the powers that contributed to the final decisions regarding the territories in East Europe.
All today’s Ukrianian territories that are not Ukrainian, like Romanian Bujac and North Bucovina, the Hungarian Transcarpathia, the Eastern Russian territories and the Polish Lviv and Volhnya were included in the Ukrainian territory after Stalin sat down in negotiations with other world power leaders and reshaped the East European map after the World War II.
Transilvania is, had been, and hopefully will always be a Romanian territory. Romanians live there even before the Roman empire emerged. We, Romanians speak a language that is a latin language sister not a Latin language branch. There is considerable Hungarian “minority” in Transilvania. After getting in EU the massive campaign of allowing foreign investors that invaded Romania brought a lot of Hungarians investors and Romania had to “accommodate them”. This made the Transilvania look even more Hungarian. Tucker Carlson visited Voctor Orban for an interview after his famous interview with Vladimir Putin and visited Romania as well, in transit, but he did not interview anyone in Romania, yet Tucker Carlson spreads rumors that Transilvania is part of Hungary but unfairly and unfortunately inside Romania’s borders at the moment. I take this pro-Hungarian stand as probably because in Romania nobody wanted to pay him good money for an interview. Romanians know that Transilvania is an unquestionable Romanian territory and do not consider that they have to push a Media campaign to convince the world that a Romanian territory belongs to Romania.
I do not know what Vladimir Putin thinks about Transilvania but Vladimir Putin is very much interested to collaborate with who-ever wants to collaborate with him on anything and even he might know that Transilvania is not a “Hungarian” territory, he will assist Voctor Orban to recover the Transcarpathia from Ukraine and may be interested to support Victor Orban in his abusive claim regarding Transilvania as well, because Romania is very anti-Russia and anti-Putin, unfortunately.
This is Victor Orban: an Austro-Hungarian Empire nostalgic, not a blessed son of God, as the peace makers are so called according to the Bible: “Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, because they will be called sons of God” (Matt. 5:9)
There still is a long way until these territories will come back to Hungary. I am glad that at least someone raises this cocnern about the historical territories, I think he made a great deal of efforts, to initiate this colosal work to recover the lost erritories, he deserve success with Transcarpathia that today is inside Ukrainian borders, yet Transilvania is, and by God’s Grace will remain a Romanian territory.