Energy deals on menu as Putin visits closest EU ally Hungary

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Budapest Wednesday for trade and energy talks with nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the latest in a regular series of meetings with his closest ally in the EU. Putin's proximity to an EU and NATO member state leader has unsettled Western powers. Orban, a self-styled "illiberal" strongman and anti-immigration figurehead for nationalists around Europe and beyond, has adopted a policy of "Eastern opening" in recent years.

He has tasked his foreign ministry with striking trade deals in countries such as China, Russia and Turkey, a strategy that has seen the 55-year-old accused of cosying up to autocrats and dictators. Near Orban's office where he will meet Putin, some opposition protesters unfurled a large banner, showing images of Putin, Orban and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the word "Dictators".

Meanwhile pro-Putin sympathisers from the local Syrian community erected Russian, Syrian and Hungarian flags at a main junction along Putin's route to the venue. "Orban presents himself as the bridge between the East and the West," said Peter Kreko, director of Budapest-based think tank Political Capital.

"Even if Hungary is a member of the Euro-Atlantic alliance, he opens to the East," he told AFP. During a visit to Moscow last year, Orban denounced EU sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea. Orban held an anti-Russian stance before becoming premier in 2010, but now calls his foreign policy a "pragmatic" courting of regional powers.

Brushing off western criticism as "hypocrisy", he often cites French and German business and political ties with Moscow. Putin's regular visits to Orban allow the latter to "demonstrate to his own electorate what an important leader he is," said Andras Racz, a Russia expert with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

"But it is equally symbolic that Putin is the only important leader doing so, no one from the EU or NATO is," he told AFP. Next week Erdogan visits Orban in Budapest, soon after praising the Hungarian for his "support" of Ankara's military operation in Syria.