BUDAPEST, Oct. 18 -- Hungary will let Ukrainian grain cross its territory on the way to Western Europe, Prime Minister Peter Magyar has said, yet he does not expect the leader who asked for the favour to come to Budapest next week.

Magyar, who signed off on Ukraine's first EU accession cluster in June, told the Hungarian television channel RTL in an interview published Saturday that "if it just passes through the country, then obviously there is no obstacle to it." A well-established transit procedure existed three to four years ago, he said, before it was discontinued.

Volodymyr Zelensky made the request at the European Council summit in Brussels on Friday. He told EU leaders that shipments across the Black Sea were currently impossibl...