Now, with little sign of Russian willingness for compromise on Ukraine, Orban is focusing on Russian energy. <\/p>\n
Deals he struck in Washington to buy US liquefied natural gas (LNG) and start buying US nuclear fuel, mean Hungary will buy less of both from Russia, potentially annoying his Russian hosts.<\/p>\n
Orban argues that without deals with the US and Russia, heating prices would triple next month.<\/p>\n
Hungary is under pressure from the EU to end all imports of Russian energy by 2027 and is likely to use any agreement in Moscow to continue to defy Brussels.<\/p>\n
Hungary currently receives over 80% of its oil and gas, and 100% of its nuclear fuel from Russia, and total Hungarian trade contributes approximately $5bn annually to the Russian budget.<\/p>\n
A “deal” in Moscow does not appear difficult. <\/p>\n
Like Trump, Putin has made clear he wants Orban to win next April’s election, so another diplomatic “triumph” for Orban would serve the interests of both sides. <\/p>\n
At this year’s Valdai Forum in Sochi on 29 September, Putin praised Orban personally, and saluted “nationally-oriented political forces” gaining ground in Europe.<\/p>\n
“If these forces in Europe continue to grow stronger, then Europe will be reborn,” Putin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now, with little sign of Russian willingness for compromise on Ukraine, Orban is focusing on Russian energy. Deals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-599856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115629124900700070","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}