Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán is set to meet Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, in a rare sign of support from an EU leader for the Republican frontrunner.

The Hungarian leader cuts a lonely figure in the EU as he openly supports Trump, a sceptic of the US’s transatlantic alliances, for a second term in the White House. The prevailing view in the rest of the bloc is that Trump would be unpredictable and difficult to deal with and increase security risks in Europe if he forced Ukraine into a ceasefire with Russia on Moscow’s terms.

“The only serious chance for peace now is if he’s able to come back — that’s my only hope,” Orbán said of Trump last week. “Otherwise, the war between Ukraine and Russia will be long, getting closer and closer to Hungary and creating more and more strong dilemmas for European politics.”