US Edition'At Your Service': Hungary's Orban Offered Help to Putin, Bloomberg Reports
Bloomberg cited a transcript showing Orban offered Putin help with a Budapest summit as Hungary kept close ties with Moscow.
- On October 17, 2025, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban offered to help Russian President Vladimir Putin "in any way," including hosting a summit in Budapest to settle the war in Ukraine, according to a transcript reviewed by Bloomberg News.
- Orban emphasized their deepening friendship, telling Putin, "yesterday our friendship rose to such a high level that I can help in any way," and comparing their dynamic to a story where a mouse helps a lion, per the transcript.
- Regarding a potential meeting with President Donald Trump, Putin described Budapest as "perhaps the only European country" acceptable as a venue, praising Hungary's "independent and flexible" stance on the Ukraine crisis.
- Although the proposed Budapest summit never occurred, Putin outlined a diplomatic pathway involving preliminary talks between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
- Orban maintains warm ties with Moscow, recently blocking European Union financing for Ukraine over a dispute regarding the Druzhba oil pipeline, which he claims is a political choice by Kyiv.
45 Articles
45 Articles
Viktor Orban described himself as the Kremlin’s “mouse” and promised to do everything to help Russia. On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that it had obtained a Hungarian government transcript of a phone call between Orban and Putin on October 17. According to it, the Hungarian leader compared their relationship to that of a “mouse” ready to help the Russian “lion” as needed. “Yesterday our friendship reached such a high level that I can help in…
In a phone call, Hungarian Prime Minister Putin offered himself as a silent helper to Kremlin chief Putin. Orbán's conversation, which has now become public, is burdensome.
A recording of a phone conversation between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin has been released. Orban offered to help Putin "in any way possible," comparing himself to a mouse helping a lion.
The conversation between the leaders of Russia and Hungary took place in October 2025. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán laughed at Russian President Vladimir Putin by mentioning the mouse Aesop’s fable that freed the lion. The moral of the story was that the lion not only spared the mouse’s life, but also gave him a reward. “Anything that can help, I will be at your service,” Orbán told Putin in the telephone talk revealed by the US agency …
The news agency Bloomberg refers to the existing transcript of the telephone conversation. The Hungarian Prime Minister drew the comparison with a fable in which a mouse helps a lion.
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