Viktor Orbán’s efforts to style himself as a high-level peacemaker by meeting world leaders including Vladimir Putin are “wrong” and “not in the interest of Europe”, the Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, has said, recalling lessons from attempts to appease Adolf Hitler before the second world war.
The Hungarian prime minister has stoked controversy in recent weeks for embarking on what he has termed a “peace mission” while his country holds the Council of the EU’s rotating presidency. The international trips have involved meetings with Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
In a wide-ranging interview in Prague, Fiala said Orbán’s efforts were helping only the Kremlin as it pursued its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“What Viktor Orbán makes, it’s not in the interest of Europe, it’s not in the interest of my country, it’s not in the interest of Ukrainian people,” the conservative Czech leader told the Guardian on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, it helps Vladimir Putin in this situation. And it’s wrong.”
His remarks came as the European parliament condemned Orbán’s Russia trip as “a blatant violation of the EU’s treaties and common foreign policy” and said Budapest should face repercussions.
Fiala, a political scientist who has been serving as the Czech Republic’s prime minister since 2021, stressed the importance of learning from history, pointing out that historical attempts to appease dangerous regimes had not worked.
“Many people believed that if we give some territory to Hitler or if we will discuss with Hitler it will prevent the war – the opposite was right,” he said, citing the 1938 Munich agreement that permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland in what was then western Czechoslovakia.
“Peace is only possible if the aggressive state, aggressive regime, understands that we are so strong that it’s not good for this regime to be aggressive with military forces. So it’s very, very clear: the past is the teacher of all of us,” Fiala said.
The Czech Republic and Hungary used to be close partners as part of the “Visegrad four” together with Poland and Slovakia, but the regional grouping has grown apart over the past few years.
Under Fiala’s government the Czech Republic has been leading a drive – involving about 20 countries – to urgently procure ammunition for Ukraine from outside the European Union, while the bloc works to boost production.
The Czech prime minister said a first shipment was made in June and further help was in the pipeline.
“We want to send till the end of this year 500,000 pieces of ammunition, which is now realistic because we have everything that we need, financing and also we know where the ammunition is and we organised it,” he said.
Fiala said Europe needed to step up assistance to Ukraine and to boost its own defences.
Asked if he was concerned about the possible impact of the upcoming US election, including the choice of an isolationist, JD Vance, as the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate, Fiala recalled discussions he had had in Washington with American lawmakers.
“My feeling was that the people understand very well what happened in Europe,” he said, adding that he was sure the next administration would stand by Ukraine. But he also stressed: “It’s maybe the most important thing: I am sure, as a political scientist and also as a politician, that Europe must be more responsible for its own security.”
He continued: “In this question, it is not so important if the next president will be Joe Biden or Donald Trump, because the United States has different, other interests in the world, and it’s not possible and also it’s not OK if we in Europe always hope or believe that our security is guaranteed by the United States.
“The transatlantic cooperation is important for all the western world, for western democracies – it must be – but we must be more responsible, we must care more about our defence, we must increase our defence expenditure.”
Fiala, whose Civic Democratic party (ODS) sits with the European Conservatives and Reformists group together with Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, also warned of Russia’s efforts to weaken European societies.
“It’s a classical hybrid war,” he said, citing disinformation and attacks targeting infrastructure. He said the Russian regime wanted to make Europeans “unsatisfied with governments, with politics, with structures of democratic society”.
The Czech prime minister is an unusual figure among European leaders, with experience as a scholar of political science and as a politician. He has worked as a university rector and professor, with his research interests including European politics.
“It’s necessary in my mind to separate the political scientist approach and the activities of prime minister,” he said. “It’s always an advantage to understand things, to know things, to know the history, to understand the politics also theoretically – it’s not automatic that if you are successful scholars you will be successful politicians, but for me it’s an advantage.”
