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The Prime Minister for Hungary, Viktor Orban, has visited Russia for a meeting with President Putin for talks on the war in Ukraine. Some of the EU leaders have criticised the visit, and have emphasised that Mr Orban is not acting on behalf of the bloc.
Mr Orban is the EU's only head of national government to have kept close ties to the Kremlin following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
He described the trip as a "peace mission" in a post on X. It comes days after he visited Kyiv.
On the first leg he spent three hours with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Tuesday - with both parts of the trip carefully choreographed to emphasise Mr Orban as a global statesman, rather than a black sheep.
As with previous moves by the 61-year-old Hungarian leader, the visit to both capitals is a gamble.
In footage of the meeting, Mr Putin said Mr Orban was visiting "not just as a long-time partner" but as a European Union representative.
Hungary has just taken over the presidency of the Council of the European Union, and will hold it to the end of the year.
Viktor Orban, speaking in the meeting, said: "Hungary will slowly become the last European country that can talk to everyone."
The Kremlin said on Friday that talks between Hungarian PM Viktor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin would last at least two or three hours, but could go on “as long as needed”.
Officials are accompanying the two leaders at the discussions, but there is a possibility they could speak one to one.
Some European leaders openly condemned the Moscow trip. Finland's Prime Minister Petteri Orpo called it "disturbing news", while Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk tweeted: "The rumours about your visit to Moscow cannot be true, @PM_ViktorOrban, or can they?"
Lewis Musonye
