US Vice President JD Vance has criticized EU leaders and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his visit to Hungary, echoing Prime Minister Viktor Orban's campaign messaging. The Kremlin chimed in from Moscow, too. US Vice President JD Vance welcomed the sudden temporary ceasefire in Iran but also turned his attention to the war in Ukraine and its impact on Budapest during the second day of his visit to Hungary on Wednesday.

Touring the country just days before Prime Minister Viktor Orban will fight for a sixth term, trailing a fellow right-wing rival Peter Magyar considerably in many polls, Vance touched on several of the veteran populist's main camapign talking points. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Vance said the Trump administration had made "significant progress" in its efforts to broker a halt to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and an accord between Kyiv and Moscow, but conceded it had been "the hardest war to solve." "In some ways we thought it would be the easiest, but it has been the hardest," Vance said. He criticized European leaders while praising Orban, arguably the NATO leader who has retained the closest ties to Moscow during the war, for their behavior amid the diplomatic impasse.

"We've been disappointed by a lot of political leadership in Europe because they don't seem particularly interested in solving this particular conflict," he said. European governments, meanwhile, counter that while they want to bring the conflict to an end, it should be what they call a just peace and not amount to an enforced partial Ukrainian capitulation. Vance said he was optimistic that an end to the fighting could be brokered, "because fundamentally this war has stopped making sense." However, he said it "takes two to tango." "We're talking about haggling at this point over a few square kilometers of territory in one direction or another, is that worth losing hundreds of thousands of additional Russian and Ukrainian men?" he asked.

"Is that worth an additional months or even years of higher energy prices and economic devastation?" Orban's political difficulties at home do not seem to stem from his foreign policy positions, but rather domestic scandals like corruption and a child sexual abuse scandal in state-run institutions. His rival Peter Magyar is a former nationalist ally who has not focused on international affairs, or signaled any plans for wholesale change, in his campaigning. If anything, Orban seems to consider his image as a strong veteran leader willing and able to confound other European leaders in Brussels as a feather in his cap.

He's been making criticism of the EU and Kyiv a cornerstone of his election campaign. Vance chimed in on this, saying that Orban had been the most helpful European leader in the US' faltering diplomatic efforts. "The most helpful has been Viktor, because Viktor is the one who's encouraged us to truly understand this, to understand from the perspective of both the Ukrainians and the Russians what is necessary for them to end the conflict," he said.

Hungary has been in dispute with Ukraine for weeks, intensified amid the rising fuel prices and the war in Iran, because of the halt to oil deliveries from Russia via a pipeline that travels through Ukraine. Ukraine says Russian bombardment damaged the pipeline, Hungary says it doubts this version of events. Landlocked Budapest was granted an exemption to EU sanctions on buying Russian oil because of its high dependence.

Orban is blocking a major EU loan package for Ukraine , originally agreed in December, as a result. Vance brought up the argument over the issue on Wednesday. Vance called Ukrianian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's reaction to Orban's blockage "scandalous." Zelenskyy had intimated that he could give Ukraine's military Orban's address.

Over Easter, Serbia and Hungary alleged that they had uncovered an attempt to sabotage another Russian pipeline, this time delivering gas, known as the Balkan Stream. Ukraine said it knew nothing of the alleged case. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Before a campaign rally with Orban late on Tuesday, Vance had accused the EU of "disgraceful" election meddling in Hungary, calling it "one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I've ever seen or ever even read about." A few hours later he would tell a cheering crowd, "we have got to get Viktor Orban re-elected." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday concurred with Vance.

"Many forces in Europe, many forces in Brussels, would not like Orban to win the elections again," Peskov told reporters in Berlin when asked about a leaked transcript, published by Bloomberg , of a conversation last year between Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin. "This is well-known, it's obvious to the naked eye, and, of course, they're playing into the hands of those forces that politically oppose Orban and belive that publishing such materials could harm him," Peskov said. Several allegations suggesting improper ties between Budapest and Moscow have surfaced this year.

Meanwhile, in Berlin, a government spokesperson disputed Vance's allegations of election interference and sought to invert them. They said that the fact that Vance was in Hungary "already shows, or speaks for itself, who is interfering in what." Most polls in Hungary put Orban behind a breakaway nationalist rival and former mermber of his Fidesz party, Peter Magyar. Some even say that the gap is very large, but their level of variance is striking and government-aligned institutes give the lead to Fidesz over Magyar's Tisza.

In any case, it looks sure to be the sternest challenge at the polls that Orban has faced in years. The 62-year-old was prime minister from 1998 to 2002, then leader of the opposition for two legislative periods, before returning to the top job in 2010 and holding it ever since. Magyar's Tisza has not really sought to campaign on foreign policy or Ukraine or the EU, if anything trying to position itself as something akin to an improved Fidesz.

It has focused primarily on domestic issues like corruption, in one of the EU's poorest member states, and a longrunning child sex abuse scandal at state-run institutions.