Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wrote a non-public letter to European Council President Charles Michel and the heads of EU member states, reporting on the results of his visits to Ukraine and Russia. This was revealed by the Russian investigative project Sistema, which received the letter – dated July 5 – from a European official. Sistema writes that the authenticity of the letter was confirmed by two other EU officials. Orbán describes the position of Russian President Vladimir Putin in greater detail than that of his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky – stating that Moscow is confident that “time is not on the side of Ukraine, but on the side of Russian troops.” The Hungarian Prime Minister claims that Putin is ready to “consider any proposal for a ceasefire that is not aimed at secretly strengthening Ukrainian troops.”

In his conversation with Orban, Putin did not mention Russian losses on the front, but he spoke often about his calculations of Ukrainian losses. Orban, referring to what Putin said, cites a figure of 40,000 to 50,000 casualties per month; the Russian president recently gave the same estimate at a meeting with foreign media.

Orbán also writes that during his visits to Kiev and Moscow he did not speak on behalf of the entire EU, but only wanted to know the positions of the conflicting parties. According to the Budapest leader, Europe must show an “independent initiative” to achieve peace, because the United States will not be able to show “political leadership” in the coming months, busy with the election campaign. “If we fail to contain or stop this process, in the next two months we will witness greater losses and military incidents on the front lines than ever before,” the Hungarian prime minister warned in his letter.