US media: PM Orbán set President Trump against Ukraine

New York Times says that President Donald Trump asked PM Orbán’s opinion about Ukraine during the Hungarian prime minister’s official visit this May even though White House national security advisors did not even want to invite the leader of the Hungarian government.

According to the paper, PM Orbán set President Trump against Ukraine. Furthermore, Washington Post says that not only PM Orbán but also Russian President Putin contributed a lot to reinforce Trump’s perception of Ukraine as a hopelessly corrupt country – index.hu reported. Moreover, he thinks that

his presidential campaign in 2016 was tried to be undermined from Kyiv.

However, they added that neither Putin nor Orbán specifically encouraged Trump to see Ukraine as a potential source of damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and they did not describe Kyiv as complicit in an unsubstantiated 2016 election conspiracy theory, officials said.

According to the New York Times, the visit by Mr Orbán, who is seen as an autocrat who has rolled back democracy,

provoked a sharp dispute within the White House.

John R. Bolton, then Trump’s national security adviser, and Fiona Hill, then the National Security Council’s senior director for Eurasian and Russian affairs, opposed an invitation to the White House for the Hungarian leader, people told NYT. But they were outmanoeuvred by Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, who supported such a meeting.

According to the paper, Mr Mulvaney became a supporter of PM Orbán during his work in Congress. As a result of Mulvaney’s support, Mr Trump sat down in the Oval Office with PM Orbán who at least fortified his negative outlook on Ukraine created before by his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and by President Putin of Russia.