Hungary has cancelled planned talks between its Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Germany’s top diplomat Annalena Baerbock, the German Foreign Ministry said on Friday evening.
Baerbock was originally scheduled to travel to Budapest on Monday. The trip will be rescheduled for a later date, the Foreign Ministry said, adding that it regretted the move.
Baerbock’s ministry said that “a serious and honest personal conversation” between the two ministers would have been “very important” in light of the Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban‘s surprise visit to Moscow earlier on Friday.
Orbán met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on Friday, holding talks for two and a half hours despite fierce criticism of the surprise visit from senior EU officials and European leaders.
Several EU officials stressed that the Hungarian leader has no official EU mandate for negotiations with Russia and that it has nothing to do with Hungary taking over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union.
The right-wing populist leader, who is often a thorn in the side of Brussels in many areas, is seen as the leader closest to Moscow among European Union leaders.
During a joint appearance with Putin after the talks, Orbán once again called for efforts to find a peaceful solution to the war in Ukraine.
