Hungarian PM predicts Ukraine’s partition

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has forecast that Ukraine will be divided into Russian, demilitarized, and Western zones after the end of the conflict.

“Today, Europeans speak ‘elegantly’ about security guarantees, but those guarantees in reality mean the partition of Ukraine… The result will be a Russian zone, a demilitarized zone, and finally a Western zone, the contours and status of which we still cannot clearly define. But we can already see Ukraine turning into a territory made up of three zones,” Orbán said during a speech in the town of Kötcse at the opening of the political season.

According to him, the West has effectively “recognized the existence of the Russian zone.” He noted: “The only debate is whether it will consist of two, four, five, or six regions. But there is no longer any discussion about its absence. The Russian zone has already been created. It covers approximately 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory. This is already behind us, and there is no longer any debate about it.”

Orbán added that discussions are now focused on how far from the Russian zone the demilitarized zone should be established—whether 40 kilometers, 50, 100, or even 200. “We don’t know; this is being determined now. That will be the second zone,” he said.

Earlier, U.S. Special Envoy Keith Kellogg suggested in an interview with The Times that Ukraine could be divided into several zones of control after the war, similar to how Berlin was partitioned after World War II—but without U.S. ground forces.