On Tuesday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held a bilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, in Beijing, Bertalan Havasi, the Prime Minister's press chief, told MTI.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held a bilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, in Beijing. On the Russian side, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, Deputy President Yuri Usakov, Minister of Economic Development Maksym Reshetnikov, Alexey Likhachev, CEO of Rosatom State Atomic Energy Company, and Chairman of the Board of Directors, Alexey Miller from Gazprom, took part in the negotiations.

After the negotiations, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán also gave speeches.

Despite the fact that in today's geopolitical conditions, the possibilities of maintaining contact and developing relations are very limited, it gives us satisfaction that we can maintain and even develop our relations with many European countries. One of them is Hungary

- said Vladimir Putin after the meeting with Viktor Orbán.

In recent decades, the relations between Hungary and Russia have been built solely by taking each other's interests into account, always relying on the positive.  

This applies to a significant number of areas of activity, primarily economics. Last year, trade and economic cooperation between the two countries expanded significantly - by over eighty percent. Unfortunately, in the first seven months of this year, we experienced a drop of minus 35 percent. Thank God, this is not more than eighty percent of last year, but you can always look for ways to improve it going forward.

Putin said that he considers it very important that Hungary, as a European Union country, has the opportunity to exchange ideas not only on bilateral relations, but also on the situation in the world and Europe.

We know that our points of view do not always coincide, but in my opinion it is always extremely important that we have the opportunity to exchange opinions

- emphasized the Russian president.

Viktor Orbán said in his speech that since 2009 they had met the Russian president for the 13th time.

As he explained, they have had difficult meetings before, but never as difficult as this one. We have never been in such a difficult position

- emphasized the Hungarian Prime Minister.

He added that Hungary never wanted to confront Russia, on the contrary, Hungary's goal has always been to establish and mutually expand the best relations. And we succeeded.

Unfortunately, the relationship between the two countries suffered greatly from the military operation and the sanctions, and this deeply affected the alliance they had built together.

He said that what Hungary can do today, it will do. In other words, we try to save everything from our bilateral relations.

We are interested in supporting this cooperation not only on the communication level, but also on the economic level, as long as it is possible

Viktor Orbán pointed out.

The Prime Minister thanked Roszatom for being an excellent partner of Hungary. He also thanked Gazprom for fulfilling its obligations under the agreement. As the Hungarian Prime Minister said, much of what the two countries had previously achieved was saved. "No one likes to have the achieved results nullified," he declared.

MTI / Hungarian Nation

Cover photo: MTI/Minister's Press Office/Zoltán Fischer