Hungary is the EU’s problem child when it comes to a unified position towards Russia. Prime Minister Viktor Orban is attempting a dual strategy: keeping Russia as a close partner while at the same time not alienating the EU completely. This path is no longer successful.
The European Union stands united against Russia. The whole EU? No, one country has backtracked since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. Hungary is resisting the sanctions, is still getting large amounts of oil and gas from Russia, Prime Minister Viktor Orban is presenting himself as a friend of Putin.
A year ago, Hungary’s head of government was one of the last Western politicians to be in Moscow to meet with Kremlin ruler Vladimir Putin. At the time, Orban described his visit as a “peace mission”. He praised the “excellent relations” between NATO and EU member Hungary and Russia and advocated “mutual respect”.
Shortly thereafter, on February 24, Russia attacked Ukraine, shocking all of Europe. Probably Orban too, who initially said nothing about it and then, with some delay, made a rather half-hearted statement to the world. He avoided the word “war” entirely. “Prime Minister Orban’s position on the war is largely determined by his proximity to Russia and President Putin. At first, Orban even called the attack a ‘military operation’, thereby adopting the Russian portrayal. In government communications, the maxim then became central: Russia and Putin never to be judged directly,” analyzes Hungary expert Sonja Priebus from the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) in the ntv podcast “Learned again”.
Orban is now officially talking about war, but emphasizes in the same breath that it is not Hungary’s war and that they will therefore stay out of it. Even a year after the Russian invasion, Orban does not want to part with his most important supplier of raw materials under any circumstances. “Although it is admitted that Russia attacked Ukraine and that the aggression came from Russia, Orban also shows a certain understanding by arguing that NATO and the West simply disregarded Russia’s security interests,” said the political scientist Priebus.
Shortly after the start of the war, critics of Orban’s policies even hoped that Hungary’s attitude towards Russia would change. Two days after Russia’s invasion, Orban announced that he does not want to block EU sanctions against Russia. He then actually agreed to them at the meeting of the heads of state and government. But not without negotiating an exemption for his own country. A real restart of the previous Kremlin-friendly politics looks different.
At every opportunity, Orban describes the sanctions against Russia as a mistake, complaining that Hungary is being “ruined” by the measures. Orban shows only a minimum of European solidarity. He officially condemns the war and participates in humanitarian aid. But that’s about it.
Hungary is meticulous about maintaining a good relationship with Moscow. This also includes the fact that Budapest is not delivering any weapons to Ukraine, and Orban also rejects arms transports from other countries through Hungary.
There are domestic reasons for all of this. Orban sees himself as the sole protector of the Hungarian people. During last year’s parliamentary election campaign, he and his Fidesz party repeatedly accused the opposition of wanting to draw Hungary into the war. Fidesz, on the other hand, is the “party of peace” that guarantees the “security of Hungary”. “Orban and his party have actually managed to use the war in Ukraine strategically in order to increase their lead over the opposition alliance. Orban and his team took a statement by opposition leader Peter Marki-Zay out of context and portrayed him as a supporter of the war dar”, reports Priebus in the podcast.
Orban and his party friends were quite successful with this campaign tactic. Fidesz won the parliamentary elections well ahead of the alliance of opposition parties. The right-wing nationalist party got 54 percent of the votes and has so many seats in parliament that it can change the constitution with a two-thirds majority.
Strengthened by this “enormous” election victory, Orban has been working even more closely with Russia since then. Hungary has “continued to give priority to economic and energy relations and is trying to conduct business as usual,” political scientist Zsuzsanna Vegh recently told the independent Russian exile medium Meduza.
Orban obtained an exception to the oil embargo. Then Hungary made an agreement with Gazprom to increase gas supplies. In September and October, an additional 5.8 million cubic meters of Russian gas per day flowed to Hungary. In addition, the country continues to build its second nuclear power plant, Paks II, which is largely financed with loans from Russia.
Orban is not yet a Putin puppet, says expert Sonja Priebus. “I can still see that Orban is still expressing his opinion and making decisions independently of Vladimir Putin. Of course, always with the thought in mind that everything he says and does does not endanger the relationship with Russia.”
Hungary still gets most of its natural gas from Russia: 85 percent, and 65 percent for oil. Orban wants to keep prices as low as possible for consumers.
At the same time, Orban is using his ties with Moscow to get concessions from the hated EU when he needs them, energy analyst Nicholas Birman-Tricket told Meduza. Hungary’s head of government hopes to get the EU billions that have been withheld because of concerns about corruption. This is the only reason why Orban supports the sanctions against Russia, at least in part, according to Hungarian media.
“On the one hand, of course, there is this financially motivated interest in staying in the EU and having access to the funds. On the other hand, Hungary doesn’t want to cut ties with Russia either,” Priebus said on “Learned Again”. If only because Moscow could also represent a kind of “insurance” for Hungary, the EU should turn off the money supply even further.
Recently, however, this strategy has not worked well. The EU Council has frozen more than half of the financial aid to Hungary. In addition, the 26 other EU countries decided to make aid payments for Ukraine without Hungary. Brussels does not want to be blackmailed.
Hungary urgently needs the EU money to curb the consequences of inflation. The rate of inflation was just under 25 percent in December and January. Food prices in particular have risen significantly, by an average of 45 percent. People are also paying more for energy and petrol – the eight-year price cap for energy in Hungary no longer applies, and the cap for fuel prices has also been lifted.
Hungary shifts the blame to Brussels. The sanctions would harm the European economies more than Russia, said Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijarto recently. Zsuszanna Vegh comes to a different conclusion about Meduza. The political scientist believes that the partnership with Russia currently brings Hungary more disadvantages than advantages.
Nevertheless, Sonja Priebus does not assume that this dual strategy will change in the foreseeable future. What worked successfully for a long time is becoming increasingly difficult the longer the war in Ukraine lasts: keeping Russia as a partner and at the same time not alienating the EU completely. Hungary is in the Russian impasse.