„China not only loves peace, but also presented a series of constructive and important initiatives [to resolve the war]," Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said of President Xi Jinping, according to Chinese state media.
"The final visit of his whirlwind tour was to presidential candidate Donald Trump, another close ally whom he is strongly backing to win again in November and whom he calls a man of peace,", he wrote in his BBC analysis.
In an interview, he stated that during Trump's four-year presidency “he has not initiated a single war".
It has been a remarkable journey under the international spotlight for the leader of a small Eastern European country of 9.7 million people. But who is it meant to impress and can it have any effect?
The main target of his message is the local audience. Viktor Orbán has had a relatively poor year so far, losing his party's two most prominent female politicians to scandal in February and seeing the emergence of his first serious challenger in more than a decade, Peter Madjar.
In June, Mr Orbán's Fidesz party won an impressive 45% in European elections to 30% for Mr Madjar's three-month-old Tisza party. But he lost over 700,000 votes (one in four) compared to the last general election in 2022.
For the first time, he doesn't seem invincible.
What better way to show Hungarians that their leader is still strong than by parading the world stage on a global "peaceful" tour?
His mission was also aimed at an international audience during the week in which his new Patriots for Europe (PfE) group in the European Parliament attracted 84 MEPs from mainly far-right parties in 11 countries.