00:00Viktor Orban's really the the chief cheerleader for this message that now Donald Trump is back,
00:06that the EU needs to rethink its support for Ukraine. He isn't alone. Robert Fico,
00:13the Prime Minister of Slovakia, is also in that group as well, but Orban is the man hosting this
00:20event. He's the one who's been meeting and greeting all of the other European and world
00:24leaders as they've arrived at this event in Budapest. And he said that Europe can't finance
00:31the current support that they're giving to Ukraine alone if the United States pulls out.
00:36Robert Fico, what he said is that, and you've got to remember when Fico came to power, he pulled his
00:40own country's financial aid to Kiev pretty much immediately. He said that Europe needs to only
00:47have the money to support Ukraine once it's dealt with the issues that are attacking Europe itself
00:52directly. And for Robert Fico, he's more concerned about migration than he is about Ukraine and
00:57Russia at the moment. Yeah, Peter, very strong words then from the Hungarian Prime Minister.
01:02European defence also on the agenda. What's being discussed there?
01:09It's a really interesting one, European defence, because you tend to get a lot of disparate views
01:13that come together in saying, yes, there needs to be a united, in many ways, European defence.
01:19We've heard this from Emmanuel Macron, the French president, saying that he doesn't want to, when
01:24his time comes, to step away from world politics, to leave Europe as a collection of herbivores,
01:30I believe was the way he put it, with carnivores surrounding them. He wants to be able to see
01:35European nations invest more in defence. Now, this particular meeting, the European
01:41Political Council, is a meeting that brings together EU member states as well as Turkey,
01:48as the United Kingdom and Ukraine as well. What we have heard, though, is the Ukrainian president,
01:54Volodymyr Zelensky, saying at this meeting that he won't accept proposals that are being put
01:59forward, that he should come to a negotiating table with Vladimir Putin or the Russian side
02:04anytime soon, and there should be a cessation in violence in the country. Volodymyr Zelensky
02:09saying no to that. But there is support here in Europe at this meeting in Budapest for more
02:16financing for European defence. How that takes form, though, and what shape that takes, we've been
02:21talking about this for a lot of years already, it's unlikely it's going to be smoothed over in
02:26this summit in Budapest right now.
Comments