What did Orbán's Kyiv visit achieve by 3 July 2024?

What was left on the table in Kyiv by 3 July 2024?Kyiv's attention that day was still on two developments from the days before: a visit by Hungary's prime minister and the arrests of four people over an alleged plot against parliament.

A visit without agreement

On 2 July 2024, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited Kyiv for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion. He proposed a ceasefire plan, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected it.

The trip was billed as the first stop in what Orbán called "peace missions", a series of uncoordinated meetings. As the background shows, he was due to go on to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, then to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, and later to the United States for the 2024 Washington summit. These later stops were part of the plan he announced in July 2024, not events that had happened by 3 July.

The outcome in Kyiv was clear on the day itself: a first visit since the invasion began, and a ceasefire proposal that Ukraine's president turned down.

A reported plot against parliament

A day earlier, on 1 July 2024, Ukrainian officials said they had uncovered a plan to storm parliament and seize control from the government on Constitution Day. They arrested four individuals implicated in the plot.

Constitution Day is a public holiday marked on 28 June each year. It commemorates the Verkhovna Rada's approval of the Constitution of Ukraine on 28 June 1996.

What the two stories had in common

The two events were not linked in the reports. Together, though, they showed pressure on Kyiv from two directions: an outside diplomatic initiative that Ukraine's leadership refused, and an alleged attempt to change the government by force that officials said they had stopped. By 3 July 2024 the ceasefire proposal had been rejected and the four arrests had been made.