“Sure to win in Ukraine” –

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has written a non-public letter to the head of the European Council Charles Michel and the heads of the European Union member states in which he reports the results of his visits to Ukraine and Russia. The Russian investigative project ‘Sistema’ revealed this, which received the letter – dated July 5 – from a European official. The authenticity of the letter, ‘Sistema’ writes, has been confirmed by two other EU officials. Orban describes the position of Russian President Vladimir Putin in more detail than that of his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky – and reports that Moscow is confident that “time is not on the side of Ukraine, but on the side of Russian forces”. The Hungarian prime minister claims that Putin is ready to “consider any proposal for a ceasefire not aimed at secretly strengthening Ukrainian forces”.

In his conversation with Orban, Putin reportedly did not mention Russian losses at the front, but he spoke extensively regarding his estimates of Ukrainian losses. Orban, quoting Putin, cites a figure of 40,000-50,000 casualties per month; the Russian president had recently provided the same estimate in a meeting with foreign media.

Orban also writes that during his visits to Kiev and Moscow he did not speak on behalf of the entire EU, but only wanted to know the positions of the parties in conflict. According to the leader of Budapest, Europe must show “independent initiative” to achieve peace, since the United States will not be able to show “political leadership” in the coming months, busy with the election campaign. “If we fail to contain or stop this process, in the next two months we will witness more dramatic losses and military events on the front lines than ever before,” the Hungarian prime minister warned in his letter.