This was confirmed by Orbán’s spokesman Bertalan Havasi late on Friday morning.

It will be the first time the head of government from an EU state has visited Moscow since thousands of Russian troops invaded Ukraine in early 2022.

Orbán, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union council, was in Kyiv a few days ago as part of a broader Hungarian attempt to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Hungarian prime minister, who has been critical of Western support for Ukraine and is considered the European leader closest to Russian President Vladimir Putin, urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to consider a “ceasefire” in order to “speed up peace talks” with Moscow.

Orban’s visit to Moscow could well trigger a furious backlash from Western leaders already unhappy with Budapest’s close ties with the Kremlin and Hungary’s blocking of EU aid packages for Ukraine.

Taking to X platform, Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, expressed his disbelief that Orban would travel to the Russian capital: “The rumors about your visit to Moscow cannot be true @PM_ViktorOrban, or can they?”

The rumours about your visit to Moscow cannot be true @PM_ViktorOrban, or can they?

— Donald Tusk (@donaldtusk) July 4, 2024

Charles Michel, President of the European Council, wrote: “The rotating presidency has no mandate to engage with Russia on behalf of the EU. The European Council is clear. Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim. No discussion about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine.” But Orbán, also posting on X, wrote: “We cannot sit back and wait for the war to miraculously end.”

You cannot make peace from a comfortable armchair in Brussels. Even if the rotating EU-Presidency has no mandate to negotiate on behalf of the EU, we cannot sit back and wait for the war to miraculously end. We will serve as an important tool in making the first steps towards… pic.twitter.com/5pqREmP8EN

— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) July 5, 2024

During his regular Friday morning radio interview, though, Orbán said that the fact that Hungary currently holds the bloc’s rotating presidency does not give him a mandate to negotiate on its behalf.

“I do not need a mandate, as I do not represent anything,” he said without saying whether he would travel to Moscow later in the day.

“All I do is go to places where there is a war or threat of war that threatens the European Union and Hungary, or has a negative consequence on them, and ask questions,” he added.