New Delhi, April 14 -- Hungarian election winner Peter Magyar said on Monday that if Russian President Vladimir Putin were to initiate a call with him, he would speak with him and tell him to end the war in Ukraine.

"If Vladimir Putin calls, I'll pick up the phone," he said at his first news conference after his landslide win against Prime Minister Viktor Orban, 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.

Magyar's statement was likely greeted with pleasure by many across the European Union who had grown accustomed to Orban's conciliatory tone when...