BUDAPEST: Hungary’s foreign minister said European leaders’ meeting in Paris on Monday to discuss Washington’s shock policy shift on the Ukraine war was an effort to “prevent” peace.
The summit comes after US President Donald Trump sidelined Kyiv and its European backers last week when he called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to talk about starting negotiations to end the conflict.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – one of the closest EU partners of Trump and Moscow – has repeatedly called for peace talks and refused to send military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2022.
“Today, in Paris, pro-war, anti-Trump, frustrated European leaders are gathering to prevent a peace agreement in Ukraine,” Peter Szijjarto told a press briefing which was livestreamed on his Facebook page.
“Unlike them, we support Donald Trump’s ambitions, unlike them, we support the US-Russian negotiations, unlike them, we want peace in Ukraine,” he added.
Leaders from the UK, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark are expected at the Paris meeting, which falls ahead of the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Antonio Costa, who heads the European Council representing the European Union’s 27 nations, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, and NATO secretary general Mark Rutte will also be present.
The French presidency said the meeting would address “the situation in Ukraine” and “security in Europe.”
Meanwhile, Slovenia’s pro-EU president also criticized the Paris meeting for not including all 27 of the bloc’s leaders.
“On a symbolic level, the organizers of the Paris summit show to the world that even within the EU not all states are treated equally,” Slovenian President Natasa Pirc Musar said in a statement.
Hungary says European leaders aim to ‘prevent’ Ukraine truce
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Hungary says European leaders aim to ‘prevent’ Ukraine truce
- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has repeatedly called for peace talks
- He has also refused to send military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s offensive in 2022
Sudanese man jailed in UK for murdering asylum hotel worker
- Deng Chol Majek followed Rhiannon Whyte, 27, to a railway station in October 2024
- He stabbed her 23 times to the head, chest and arm with a screwdriver
LONDON: A Sudanese asylum seeker was jailed on Friday for a minimum of 29 years for murdering a woman who worked at the hotel in central England where he and other migrants were being housed.
Anti-immigration activists have seized on other criminal cases involving asylum seekers, predominantly young men, in hotels to argue that they are a danger to nearby communities.
Last summer, a number of protests at asylum hotels across England – sparked by the arrest of an Ethiopian asylum seeker for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman – turned violent.
The Labour government, nervous of the rise of the anti-immigration Reform UK party in opinion polls, has promised to clamp down on illegal immigration and, by 2029, to stop placing asylum seekers in hotels while their cases are processed.
Deng Chol Majek followed Rhiannon Whyte, 27, to a railway station in October 2024 after she finished her shift.
He stabbed her 23 times to the head, chest and arm with a screwdriver. She died in hospital three days later.
Majek was convicted in October and sentenced on Friday to life imprisonment with a minimum of 29 years at Coventry Crown Court, where some anti-immigration protesters gathered outside for the hearing.
Judge Michael Soole said the murder was “particularly vicious” and told Majek there had been a “chilling composure in every aspect of your behavior.”
