Hardly anyone is as hated in the European Union right now as Viktor Orbán, who flew to Moscow on 5 July to meet Vladimir Putin to “discuss peace conditions”, and pose smilingly shaking hands. On his way back, Orbán gave an interview, visibly happy with himself, bragging he arranged the meeting behind the back of EU, NATO and all his allies. A few days later he surprised the world again by flying to China through Russian airspace. On Monday, Putin bombed a children’s hospital in Kyiv.

Everybody is visibly very upset. Several EU diplomats went out of their way to make it clear that Orbán was by no means representing the European Union in Moscow. This was, however, a drop in the bucket. Putin and Orbán – friends, as they like to refer to each other – had long had an agenda, and were both very happy with themselves.

Putin, like many other times before, used Orbán as a tool to humiliate the West. He did so by greeting him as the representative of the European Union (since 1 July, Hungary is filling the rotating presidency of the European Council), despite knowing full well it was not the case. While “discussing peace conditions” was the justification of the visit, he had already repeated his conditions for peace – which is Ukrainian capitulation – before Orbán even arrived, and repeated them again at the closing press conference. For him, this was a magnificent prank: he didn’t do, change, or discuss anything, but he used the prime minister of the country holding the current EU presiceny to fortify his message, while creating confusion and moral crisis in Europe.

For Orbán, this was also a great success. Above all, he was extremely pleased he could arrange such a visit in complete secrecy, just 3 days after having visited Zelenskyy in Kyiv. He demonstrated he can still do anything on God’s green Earth without consequences, and he enjoys breaking the rules at every turn. In the interview, he emphasized he’d like to abuse Hungary’s EU presidency to exert even more political power, and is planning to execute further such surprise actions.

More importantly, he successfully sold his shenanigans as a “peace mission” to not only Hungarian voters, but American Trump-supporters as well. He poses as the only person who is “able to sit down with both sides”, claiming this puts him into a unique position, even the only one who can mediate between the adversaries. This may play an important role in the Trump campaign, which is actively building on the belief the likes of Orbán (and Trump) are the ones who are able to “do stuff”, contrary to “rotten” mainstream politics.

Orbán announced his Chinese visit with the caption “peace mission 3.0” (The first must have been Kyiv, which is being bombed as I write, the second Moscow.) He’s flying to the NATO Summit in Washington (probably dubbed as peace mission 4.0) straight from Beijing, while many of us wonder how he can keep doing this.

“Kicking Hungary out of EU / NATO” have long been loud demands from civilians and politicians alike. However, it is not realistic. Hungary cannot be voted out, and nobody has the authority to just fire a country from either of these organizations. However, this doesn’t mean nothing can be done.

Regarding the EU, Hungary’s presidency of the European Council can be cut short and moved on to the next country, Poland. This is something EU member states can achieve with a simple qualified majority, and every self-respecting member of the Council should be pushing for it. Ideally, Hungary should as well be omitted from the “equal rotation” of EC presidencies, which is also achievable with a ⅘ majority. This is the only way to stop Orbán from abusing his role.

With NATO, Hungary is currently trying to avoid participating in any support towards Ukraine. However, as of June, Orbán has promised to not oppose other member states’ such efforts, and meet all NATO requirements. While Orbán’s promises are almost as weighty as Putin’s, we have seen that the USA still has the means to kick him in the rear if decides so. Famously in the spring of 2023, the USA announced to impose severe sanctions on Hungary for hosting a Russian “spy bank” in the country, whose Russian employees possessed EU passports with full diplomatic immunity. Within 24 hours, Hungary withdrew from the bank altogether to avoid being sanctioned.

One thing is sure: Orbán understands nothing but raw power. That’s why he doesn’t mind if Putin humiliates him and uses him as a puppet: he sees the raw power behind it. He doesn’t care if he’s hated, he kind of likes it. He’s not bothered by anger, scolding, scandals and disappointment: as long as there’s no raw power demonstration to follow it up, all he does is laugh at it. He sure as hell doesn’t care how many Ukrainians (or Taiwanese, or Georgians, or Estonians for that matter) die. Power demonstration is the only way to do something about this person.

If this doesn’t happen, what we’ve seen so far may just be the beginning. There are plenty of autocrats left to visit on “peace missions”, starting with Donald Trump or Orbán’s old idol Benjamin Netanyahu. In the interview on his way from Moscow, Orbán casually mentioned that “Russia has an idea for Europe’s future security architecture, although it’s too early to discuss”. We can all guess what those are.

That’s how little he cares about the EU, or NATO, or Western values, or anything of that sort. Do we care?