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What did Orbán's Kyiv visit achieve by 3 July 2024?
Summary
A look back at the day after the Hungarian prime minister's first wartime trip to Ukraine and the arrests over an alleged plot against parliament.
What was left on the table in Kyiv by 3 July 2024, a day after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán made his first visit to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion? The answer, as reported at the time, was a ceasefire proposal that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had rejected on 2 July.
A first visit, and a rebuffed plan
Orbán travelled to Kyiv on 2 July 2024 and put forward a ceasefire plan. Zelenskyy turned it down. The trip was the first by the Hungarian prime minister to Ukraine since the invasion began.
It was also billed as the start of something larger. Orbán described a series of uncoordinated meetings as "peace missions". After Kyiv, he was to travel to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, then to Beijing to see Chinese leader Xi Jinping. A later stop in the United States followed, for the 2024 Washington summit and a meeting with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Those later legs came after the covered date.
The Kyiv visit therefore stood as the opening step of an itinerary that continued into other capitals, set against heightened tensions over the war and China's deepening diplomatic ties with Russia amid European Union and US sanctions.
An alleged plot on Constitution Day
The Kyiv visit was not the only political story in the days before 3 July 2024. On 1 July, Ukrainian officials said they had uncovered a plan to storm parliament and seize control from the government on Constitution Day, and that four people implicated in the plot had been arrested.
Constitution Day is a public holiday marked on 28 June each year since 1996. It commemorates the Verkhovna Rada's approval of the Constitution of Ukraine on that date in 1996.
Where things stood
By 3 July 2024, then, two threads defined the political picture in Kyiv. One was diplomatic: a visiting EU-member leader had offered a ceasefire plan and had been refused by the Ukrainian president. The other was domestic security: officials said they had foiled an attempt to take over parliament and had four people in custody.
