Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place in Hungary on April 12

 And the closer we get to the date, the more aggressive becomes the country’s current Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s rhetoric  regarding Ukraine.

First Orbán stated that he did not support Ukraine because he did not want Hungarians to die in Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Then he began to make more overt anti-Ukrainian statements and actually  take a pro-Russian position.

Let’s analyze the facts.

Recently, the Russians launched a massive missile strike on Ukraine, which disabled the “Druzhba” oil pipeline that supplied Russian oil to Hungary.

And here, for some reason, Orbán does not express any complaints to the Russians, but begins to groundlessly accuse Ukraine of allegedly preventing Hungary from receiving cheap oil from Russia. It is obvious that in this situation, Viktor Orbán, disregarding the basic laws of logic, is deliberately trying to break the cause-and-effect relationship and, by distorting the facts, shift the blame from Russia to Ukraine. In his openly anti-Ukrainian rhetoric, Orbán goes further and is already beginning to make direct threats against Ukraine. What did he mean when he said that if Ukraine does not voluntarily comply with the demands of the current Hungarian government, he will force it to do so? What force and how exactly does Viktor Orbán intend to use against Ukraine?

It is known that the current Hungarian armed forces have only 32,000 military personnel. Does he want this army to attack the Ukrainian Armed Forces, hardened by 12 years of war with Russia?

There is another important question. Hungary is a member of the EU and NATO. How should they act and whose side should they take if Orbán’s government provokes an armed conflict with Ukraine?

Obviously, under the current circumstances, such a development is unlikely. In order to have a real opportunity to use force against Ukraine, Orbán would have to withdraw Hungary from NATO and the EU and enter into a direct alliance with Russia.

All these facts directly confirm that the Viktor Orbán  government’s  policy contradicts the interests of NATO and the EU and should be properly assessed by the leaders of those organizations. We hope that the majority of Hungarians will also correctly assess Orbán’s policies and express their position in the parliamentary elections on April 12, which will be of crucial importance for Hungary, the EU, and NATO in the coming years.

Oleh Bereziuk,
Institute for Global Politics