Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on a self-styled “peace mission” on Friday, triggering condemnation from European Union leaders who said he had no mandate to represent the bloc.

The Hungarian leader, who visited Kyiv a day after he took over the E.U.’s six-month rotating presidency on July 1, said ahead of the meeting that he had no intention of representing the 27-member bloc.

But speaking alongside the Russian leader after talks, he said he regarded the E.U. presidency as part of his mission and presented himself as uniquely positioned to mediate. The Kremlin said after the talks that there was no progress on Ukraine, according to the state-run Tass news service, citing Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

“I’ve seen that the positions are far apart and the number of steps leading to an end to the war and to peace is great,” Orban told reporters afterward. For his part, Putin expressed gratitude for the visit, though said that Orban had reiterated “Western views” that are well known to the Kremlin.

The Russian leader reinforced Russia’s position on a possible settlement that he laid out in a speech to the Russian Foreign Ministry last month, in which he demanded Kyiv withdraw its forces from four regions partially occupied by his troops and abandon its goal of joining NATO.

Orban’s journey was initiated by Budapest, according to Peskov. Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said that the Hungarian leader didn’t bring a message from Zelenskyy, Tass reported.

But the trip to the Russian capital succeeded in provoking a sharp response from the rest of the E.U., which had already been worried about how Hungary would approach its presidency. “Appeasement will not stop Putin,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a post on X after Orban landed.

Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nauseda, went further. “If you truly seek peace, you don’t shake hands with a bloody dictator, you put all your efforts to support #Ukraine,” he said on X.

Orban used his Kyiv visit — his first since the Russian invasion began in 2022 — to pitch a cease-fire deal to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Although the Ukrainian leader lauded the trip as a “good signal” from Budapest, he told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday that a cease-fire proposal was a non-starter for Kyiv.

Orban, who has provoked ire from European counterparts for blocking aid at times to Ukraine and maintaining his ties with Moscow, said after the meeting with Zelenskyy that he was preparing a report for E.U. leaders.

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