A defiant Hungarian leader Viktor Orban vowed Thursday to keep blocking a massive loan for Ukraine despite heavy pressure from EU partners, who were headed into a Brussels summit hoping to unlock the much-needed funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moscow’s closest partner in the bloc, the nationalist prime minister has long resisted helping Kyiv to repel Russia’s invasion, stalling EU aid and repeated rounds of sanctions.<\/p>\n
This time around, Orban is holding up a 90-billion-euro ($104 billion) loan as leverage in a feud over damage to a pipeline running through Ukraine — which has choked the flow of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia.<\/p>\n
“The Hungarian position is very simple. We are ready to support Ukraine when we get our oil, which is blocked by them,” Orban said on arriving at the Brussels summit — which Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky was to address by videolink later in the day.<\/p>\n
The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas warned on arrival it was “really, really time” to show support for Ukraine by unlocking the funding — which Hungary’s prime minister signed up to in December along with the rest of the bloc.<\/p>\n
But Orban appeared determined to play hardball, as he leans into anti-EU and anti-Ukrainian narratives ahead of close-fought national elections on April 12 — to the exasperation of fellow EU leaders.<\/p>\n
“He’s using Ukraine as a weapon in his election campaign, and it’s not good. We had a deal,” said Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The weeks-long spat has seen landlocked Hungary and Slovakia both accuse Ukraine of stalling on pipeline repairs — while Zelensky has called it “blackmail” to link the issue to support for its war effort.<\/p>\n
The European Commission moved this week to unblock the situation by sending a team to help restore oil transit, but Budapest has dismissed the initiative, with Orban describing it as a “fairy tale” Thursday.<\/p>\n
“We are waiting for the oil,” Orban told reporters — calling the matter “existential” for Hungary.<\/p>\n
“It’s not a joke, it’s not a political game.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Others disagreed — suggesting the block was squarely motivated by national politics. Cue a looming showdown and a tricky balancing act for Orban’s EU counterparts.<\/p>\n
“It will be complicated before the elections in Hungary; I have the impression that this is part of his election campaign,” said Belgium’s Bart de Wever.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“In any case, we have to implement the decisions we’ve made here,” he added, calling Orban’s U-turn “unacceptable”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0– ‘No Plan B’ –<\/p>\n
It’s a well worn routine in Brussels, where Orban has held up countless decisions on Ukraine, and solutions have ultimately been found — in one famous case having him leave the room while the bloc approved the start of membership talks with Kyiv.<\/p>\n
A German government official described a “certain momentum” on the pipeline issue — seeing a chance of a breakthrough when leaders come face-to-face on Thursday.<\/p>\n
But the message from other capitals was less optimistic.<\/p>\n
“Will we make progress? I have strong doubts,” said an EU diplomat, predicting Orban was “not going to budge” on a stance playing well with his voter base at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Complicating matters, leaders are wary of offering Orban — who is trailing main rival Peter Magyar in the polls — a chance to bolster his image as a maverick on the EU stage by publicly ganging up on him.<\/p>\n
Failure to break the deadlock this week would most likely push the issue back until after the Hungarian vote, whatever its outcome.<\/p>\n
Can Ukraine hold out until then? Unclear, say EU insiders.<\/p>\n
Facing a budget shortfall four years into the war, Kyiv is estimated to need an influx of funds in early May — implying a decision to unlock the EU loan by mid-April.<\/p>\n
As Orban has dug in, there has been talk of alternative solutions to help keep Ukraine afloat — but a second EU diplomat poured cold water on the notion.<\/p>\n
“There’s no bridging solutions or Plan B. There’s only one plan, and that’s Plan A,” they said. “Orban should deliver on his promise.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A defiant Hungarian leader Viktor Orban vowed Thursday to keep blocking a massive loan for Ukraine despite heavy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[2776,18,345,125,347,3282,3278,493,326,1655,192,5158,88,5157,395],"class_list":["post-7156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-afp","tag-brussels","tag-diplomacy","tag-european-union","tag-foreign-policy","tag-foreign-relations-of-ukraine","tag-global-politics","tag-government","tag-hungary","tag-international-relations","tag-politics","tag-politics-of-ukraine","tag-ukraine","tag-viktor-orbn","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116255513842669799","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}