Representative Mike Waltzthe Florida Republican who is Donald Trump’s choice for him national security advisorsaid on Sunday that the president-elect has a good relationship with the Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban that he suggested it could play a key role in ending the war in Ukraine.
“Orbán is in regular contact with the Russians, and he clearly has a good relationship with President Trump,” Waltz said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” “I hope the whole world wants to see some kind of cessation of the massacres taking place in eastern Ukraine.”
Orbán, an authoritarian leader with ties to Russia, met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last week, along with Waltz and Elon Musk. Days after the meeting, Orbán announced that he had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin and said that “we are taking all possible diplomatic steps to advocate for a ceasefire” and peace talks. He later appeared to broker a Christmas ceasefire and prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine.
Waltz would not say whether Orbán’s message to Putin arose from the meeting with Trump. But he noted that “we will continue to talk,” and that “President Trump has made it clear that he wants this war to end.”
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“We have to stop the fighting,” Waltz said. “If that is some kind of ceasefire as a first step, we will re-examine what that means.”
Trump has repeatedly promised that he would end the war between Russia and Ukraine immediately upon returning to the White House, while claiming that Putin would never have invaded the country if he were president. Waltz said that since Trump’s election victory, the framework of discussion with world leaders around the Russia-Ukraine war has shifted to talk about how the conflict will end.
“How do we end this conflict? How do we do it in a way that restores stability, stops the carnage and hopefully puts a permanent end to it, and not just a lull?” Waltz said. “Those are all things we’re thinking about.”
The meeting with Orbán came after Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris on December 7, after which Trump called for an immediate ceasefire and that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine can begin.
Zelensky said after the president’s statement that the war “cannot just end with a piece of paper and a few signatures.” And while he said he had a “good meeting” with Trump, he warned that a ceasefire “could be reignited at any time without guarantees.”
The Biden administration announced last week that it would send another package of weapons to Ukraine worth $500 million, according to Reuters. Ukrainian Ambassador to the US Oksana Markarovawho also appeared on “Face the Nation” on Sunday, said her country’s ability to fight Russian forces “is still a matter of artillery, weapons and air defense, the most important thing, and the more we can have, the faster we can – the more efficiently we can defend.”
But Markarova noted that “we are not asking for other troops. The Ukrainians are still capable of defending our own country. We are asking for military support.”
