Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, has commented on the meeting between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin in China, during which the former called the Russian war of aggression a "military operation".

"I hope that he [Orbán] has at least washed and disinfected his hands after a handshake with Putin," 

Putin and Orbán met in China on 17 October. It was the first meeting between Putin and an EU member state leader in over a year and the first meeting with a NATO state leader since the beginning of the full-scale war.

In April 2022, Karl Nehammer, chancellor of Austria, which is not a part of NATO, came to Moscow on a visit.

Due to Putin’s talks with Orbán, NATO ambassadors in Budapest held a meeting amid the concern of the NATO allies about the rapprochement of Hungary and Russia.