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

What had Viktor Orbán's arrival in Kyiv changed by 3 July 2024? On the previous day, 2 July 2024, the Hungarian prime minister visited the Ukrainian capital for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He proposed a ceasefire plan, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected it.

A trip billed as a peace mission

Orbán described the visit as one of several uncoordinated meetings he called "peace missions". Kyiv came first. He was then due to travel to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by Beijing to see Chinese President Xi Jinping. The itinerary ended in the United States, where he planned to attend the 2024 Washington summit and to meet Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Those later stops belonged to the weeks ahead and were not part of the Kyiv meeting itself.

On 3 July 2024 the outcome in Kyiv was therefore plain: the first visit by a Hungarian prime minister since the invasion began had produced a ceasefire proposal and a Ukrainian refusal.

A separate alarm at home

The visit came as Ukrainian officials reported another development. On 1 July 2024 they 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. It commemorates the approval of the Constitution of Ukraine by the Verkhovna Rada on 28 June 1996.

What the two stories showed

The two reports were unrelated, and nothing links them. One concerned Ukraine's relations with a neighbouring EU member whose leader arrived with a ceasefire proposal that Kyiv turned down. The other concerned the security of the country's own institutions, with arrests already made.

As of 3 July 2024, Orbán's tour was only beginning, and the rejection in Kyiv set the starting point for the Moscow and Beijing stops that followed.