As Xi Jinping welcomed Orban to the Chinese capital, Russian missiles crashed in kyiv, Dnipro and other Ukrainian cities on Monday, killing at least 31 people, including two at a Kiev children’s hospital, and underscoring the vicious brutality of Putin’s war.
In response to the missile attack, but also apparently to the new diplomatic maneuvers, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for international pressure to stop Russian aggression. “The whole world must show all its determination to finally put an end to Russian strikes,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram. “Murders are what Putin brings. Only together can we bring real peace and security.”
Orban’s visit to China follows trips to kyiv and Moscow last week, just days after Hungary took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. Its foray into the peace process has drawn criticism in the West for pressuring Kiev to cede territory that Moscow has seized by force.
In Brussels, officials have dismissed Orban’s efforts, saying he is not authorized to conduct diplomatic activities for the EU. “It must be clear that he only represents his own country,” said one EU diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
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European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer stressed that Viktor Orban was acting alone. “He has no mandate to represent the EU during these visits,” he said.
But Putin, in welcoming Orban to Moscow last week, pointedly referred to Hungary’s EU presidency, and in a sign of the new multipolar dimension of geopolitics, the Hungarian prime minister’s visit to Beijing came just hours before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Moscow for a state visit, his first since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In a statement before leaving New Delhi on Monday, Modi hailed “his friend Vladimir Putin” and “the special and privileged strategic partnership between India and Russia.” After landing, Russian and Indian media showed Modi, wearing a bright turquoise vest, arriving at his Moscow hotel and greeted by Indian dancers and supporters waving Indian flags.
India’s purchases of Russian oil, which have increased 20-fold since 2021, have helped Moscow withstand tough Western economic sanctions imposed in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
With his visit to Moscow, Modi, re-elected last month, sought to signal his autonomy even as the Biden administration has sought to court the Indian leader.
“Mr. Putin would like to make it clear to the public that India is a friend, that all this talk about isolating Russia is empty talk, that not everyone is under the thumb of the US-led West, and that the asymmetrical but multipolar world has arrived,” said Nandan Unnikrishnan, director of the Eurasian program at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. “India recognizes that the world is multipolar, even if it is slightly tilted toward the West.”
The presence of Viktor Orban and Xi Jinping represented a diplomatic triumph for Putin, who has long called for a multipolar, non-Western world order. Putin has insisted that the West, particularly the United States and Britain, was responsible for prolonging his war in Ukraine by failing to pressure kyiv to give in to its territorial demands.
Upon his arrival in China, Orban posted a photo of himself with the caption: “Peace Mission 3.0 #Beijing.”
During his meeting with Viktor Orban in Beijing, Xi Jinping said he appreciated the Hungarian leader’s efforts to find a political solution to the war in Ukraine, which he called a “conflict.”
“China and Hungary share the same fundamental positions and are working in the same direction,” he said.
“Only when all major powers exert positive energy instead of negative energy can the dawn of a ceasefire in this conflict emerge as soon as possible,” Xi said, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. China, Xi added, “has actively called for peace and advocated talks in its own way.”
Ukraine has insisted that it cannot accept any ceasefire while Russian forces occupy about a fifth of its territory and missiles and bombs are falling on its cities. Zelensky has called for a complete withdrawal of Russian troops, including at a “peace” summit in Switzerland last month that China deliberately did not attend. Russia was not invited.
Monday’s missile strikes appear to support kyiv’s claim that any ceasefire without a Russian withdrawal would simply allow Moscow to regroup its forces and plan new attacks to fully realize its territorial ambitions.
In kyiv, the Ohmatdyt children’s hospital was hit, killing two people, including a doctor. At least ten others were injured, according to Ukrainian emergency services, and patients and hospital staff were forced to evacuate into the street. In the city of Kryvyi Rih, at least ten people were killed, authorities said.
A total of 31 people were killed across the country, including 20 in kyiv, and at least 61 were injured, emergency services said.
In an interview with German newspaper Bild, Orban insisted that Ukraine could never defeat Russia. “There is no solution to this conflict on the front,” he said, adding: “Putin cannot lose if you consider soldiers, equipment and technology. Defeating Russia is a difficult idea to imagine. The probability that Russia will actually be defeated is completely incalculable.”
While Orban’s comments to Bild may reflect a harsh reality that Ukraine and its Western backers are reluctant to acknowledge, Monday’s missile strike quickly underscored the terrible toll of Putin’s war.
Beijing has rejected criticism from Ukraine, Europe and the United States over its decision not to attend a peace summit in Switzerland last month, arguing that it cannot take part in negotiations that exclude Russia.
China, alongside Brazil, presented its own six-point proposal, for which Chinese officials said they had won support from dozens of countries in the developing world.
From Beijing’s perspective, Western countries have been an obstacle to direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, said Cui Hongjian, an international relations expert at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
Beijing believes it “needs to make its voice heard and have a position,” Cui said.
China’s supposed neutrality has come under increasing pressure as the war drags on for three years and China’s trade with Russia booms, alongside mounting evidence that Chinese companies provide economic and indirect support to Russia’s military-industrial base.
In their public statements and appearances, Putin and Xi have increasingly shown their alignment in their shared ambition to reshape the global order and weaken U.S. influence.
Xi and Putin met last week in Kazakhstan, where Putin spoke of progress toward a “just multipolar world order” at the annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, one of several multilateral groups that both powers have used to expand their influence.
At that meeting, Putin suggested resuming the negotiations that took place in Istanbul in 2022, shortly after Russia’s invasion, when Ukraine was in a weak position. In the years since, each side has suffered tens of thousands of casualties and Russia has made only marginal progress toward illegally annexing four regions in southeastern Ukraine, in addition to Crimea, which it seized by force in 2014.
On Monday in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow supported diplomatic efforts.
“President Vladimir Putin is a strong supporter of the need for political and diplomatic efforts to find a solution to the Ukrainian conflict,” Peskov said.
Zelensky said on Telegram that Russia had fired more than 40 missiles at five or more Ukrainian cities, and that in kyiv, residential homes and a children’s hospital had been hit. He added that the world should unite to stop Russian aggression.
“All services are mobilized to save as many people as possible,” Zelensky wrote. “And the whole world must show all its determination to finally put an end to the Russian strikes. Murders are what Putin brings. Only together can we bring real peace and security.”
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed on Telegram that it carried out a major missile attack on Ukraine on Monday, but insisted that the targets were “Ukrainian military industry facilities” and “air bases.”
Shepherd reported from Taipei, Taiwan, and Shih from New Delhi. Serhii Korolchuk from kyiv, Kate Brady in Berlin, Emily Rauhala in Washington and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.
