Ukraine war briefing: Hungary’s new leader says he would ask Putin to end the killing in Ukraine

Péter Magyar would ‘talk to Russian president, but won’t initiate contact’; Ukraine welcomes defeat of Orbán. What we know on day 1,511 Péter Magyar, Hungary’s new leader, said he would ask Vladimir Putin to end the killing in Ukraine if they speak, and plans to review Hungary’s Russian energy contracts and renegotiate them if needed. Magyar said he would talk to the Russian president, but won’t initiate contact. “If Vladimir Putin calls, I’ll pick up the phone,” he said in his first news conference after his landslide win against Viktor Orbán, a Putin ally. “If we did talk, I could tell him that it would be nice to end the killing after four years and end the war. It would probably be a short phone conversation and I don’t think he would end the war on my advice,” he said. Ukraine welcomed with relief on Monday the defeat of Orbán, its harshest critic in the EU, an outcome that paves the way for a €90bn ($105bn) loan that Kyiv urgently needs to fund the war with Russia. Higher oil prices caused by the war in the Middle East could raise inflation rates in Ukraine by 1.5 to 2.8 percentage points, Ukraine’s top central banker said on Monday. The Natio