PUTIN pal Viktor Orban is flying to Moscow today for crunch talks with the Russian president over the Trump-backed peace plan for Ukraine.
The Hungarian Prime Minister confirmed he would meet with Putin to discuss crude and gas supplies for his country and could “hardly avoid” the topic of ongoing peace efforts.
The talks come as Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities launched a major probe in Volodymyr Zelensky‘s chief of staff and top peace negotiator Andriy Yermak that threatens to engulf the Ukrainian leader.
Orban has stayed close to Putin despite the invasion next door as Hungary still leans heavily on Russian energy, even though the EU has tried to cut dependence.
He announced the trip in a Facebook video saying, “I am going [to Moscow] to ensure that Hungary’s energy supply is secured for the winter and next year.”
It comes after the US handed Hungary a rare sanctions exemption this month so it can keep using Russian oil and gas.
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Orban secured the deal during a friendly meeting with Trump in Washington.
Budapest also inked a nuclear power pact with the US letting Hungary buy American fuel and tech for storing spent fuel at the Russian-built plant known as Paks I.
Russia’s Rosatom is still trying to finish a long-delayed extension there first launched in 2014.
Orban is also pushing to revive a Budapest peace summit between Trump and Putin that was shelved earlier this year.
Unlike most NATO and EU bosses, he has continued to cosy up to the Kremlin while also questioning Western weapon supplies for Ukraine.
Hungary has already imported 8.5 million tonnes of Russian crude and over 7 billion cubic metres of Russian gas this year, according to its foreign ministry.
Meanwhile, an anti-corruption raid on Zelensky’s trusted chief of staff Andriy Yelmak today has humiliated the Ukrainian president.
Yermak confirmed on Telegram that investigators were at his home and insisted he was fully cooperating. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Another key figure in the scandal is businessman and Zelensky friend Timur Mindich, who has fled abroad.
Ukraine’s corruption busters NABU and SAPO said the searches were “authorised” and part of an ongoing probe.
The raid follows a massive investigation into an alleged £75million kickback scheme at the state atomic energy firm which has already snared former top officials and one of Zelensky’s old business partners.
Yermak has not been named as a suspect, but MPs from the opposition and even Zelensky’s own camp have demanded he be fired as the scandal explodes into Ukraine’s biggest wartime political crisis.
Earlier, Yermak had sought to show it was business as usual as he insisted Zelensky would reject a US-brokered peace deal that included Putin’s chief demand – surrender of the Donbas, namely all of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
He said: “As long as Mr Zelensky is president, no one should count on us giving up territory. He will not sign away territory.”
The dramatic searches are set to deepen tensions in Kyiv just as the US pushes Ukraine to accept a new peace deal to end the grinding war with Russia.
Putin’s henchmen have meanwhile been licking their lips at the prospect of dismembering Ukraine amid the turmoil.
Former Deputy Premier and ex-head of the Russian space agency Dmitry Rogozin boasted: “The city of Zaporizhzhia will be liberated from Ukrainian fascists.”
While Sergei Stepashin, former premier and ex-FSB spymaster, predicted Russia could swoop the prized Black Sea cities of Mykolaiv [Nikolaev] and Odesa from a weakened Ukraine.
This comes as Putin vowed to go further with his war unless Ukraine surrendered the industrial Donbas in full.
He warned than unless Kyiv hands over the territories that he would fight “until the last Ukrainian dies.”
He added: “Ukrainian troops will withdraw from the territories they occupy, and then the fighting will cease,
“If they do not withdraw, we will achieve this by force of arms.”
Putin was so pumped by Russia’s frontline gains that he claimed to take control of Komsomolsk – a city that doesn’t even exist in the war zone.
Yesterday, the despot insisted that he has no plans to take the rest of Europe, dismissing suggestions that Moscow aims to push beyond Ukraine as “ridiculous.”
Despite these claims, Russia’s war machine continues to churn out missiles at what experts describe as an alarming rate.