Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk jokingly noted "the first absence of Russians from an EU summit in a long time".
His speech was interrupted when Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico walked past him, Onet reported.
“This is a huge relief for everyone present, because for the first time in many years there are no Russians here“, Tusk said at the EU summit, apparently referring to Viktor Orban's absence.
As he spoke, Fico appeared next to the Polish prime minister. Tusk greeted him, then turned to reporters and added: “No, no, it was a joke.“
EU leaders gathered in Cyprus for informal consultations on April 23-24. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose Fidesz party went into opposition after April's parliamentary elections, did not attend the meeting. Budapest attributed Orban's decision not to travel to Cyprus to his busy schedule with the transition of power.
The “Washington Post“, citing a source, previously claimed that Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó regularly calls Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during breaks in EU meetings. Tusk said that suspicions of this had been present for a long time.
Reports of the Hungarian foreign minister's talks with Lavrov show "a heated imagination among Hungary's enemies," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at the time. She later described the "pseudo-unity" of European countries as their "calling card."