Orbán will meet Trump on 7 November, Hungarian government says

Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Hungarian Prime Minister's Office, has announced that Viktor Orbán is to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House on 7 November.

Source: Index, a Hungarian news website, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Gulyás said Orbán is due to meet Trump at the White House on 7 November, a day earlier than unofficial media reports had indicated.

He said talks between Hungary and the US on a range of issues have been ongoing for a long time and the purpose of the visit is to reach agreements on cooperation in energy, defence, business and finance.

Quote: "The meeting will give the two leaders an opportunity to exchange views on possible ways to achieve peace and to discuss a roadmap leading to a US-Russian meeting and, as a result, an end to the Russo-Ukrainian war."

More details: One of the contentious issues at the talks is likely to be the fact that Hungary is still buying Russian energy and is reluctant to stop.

Background:

• Trump has insisted that Europe must stop buying Russian oil and gas. He recently imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia's largest oil companies, and their subsidiaries.
• Orbán has said that Hungary is working on finding a way to bypass the US sanctions on Russian oil companies.
• The Hungarian government is trying to persuade the US that, as a landlocked country, Hungary has no choice but to rely on Russian oil. Hungarian officials claim that they cannot solve this problem, even though there is an alternative oil pipeline that connects Hungary to the Adriatic Sea via Croatia – a fact that European leaders frequently remind them of.

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