Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban delivered a speech in the Romanian resort town of Baile Tusnad in late July this year – a speech that sparked outrage across Europe. In it, the prime minister criticized the mixture of European and non-European “races” that, in his opinion, leads to the displacement of the peoples of Western Europe and the formation of “mixed” countries in the post-Western world.

The terms used by Orban were reminiscent of Nazi speeches, and this provoked a strong reaction from the international community. Less outrage was caused by Orban’s statements about Russia and the Russian war against Ukraine. However, they deserve no less attention.

Orban became the spokesperson for the Kremlin

The Hungarian prime minister at Baile-Tusnad actually acted as a spokesperson for the Kremlin. He recalled Russia’s fears about Ukraine’s possible NATO membership and called them an understandable, if not justified, reason for the aggression. He also repeated Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s threat that Russia would move the front line further west.

Orban openly insinuated the responsibility of the West, and especially the United States, for the war, as it allegedly ignored the Kremlin’s concerns and advocated immediate peace talks. For these negotiations to be successful, they must be led by Russia and the United States, because Washington is the last to agree with Moscow’s concerns, he said.

While the Hungarian prime minister did not intend to directly justify Russian aggression, his demands deny Ukraine’s viability as well as its sovereign right to independently choose to participate in one security alliance or another. Orban took the Kremlin argument and sacrificed the international values ​​and commitments on which Hungary’s membership in NATO is based.

Threats to veto EU sanctions against Russia

The fact that Orban used a Russian narrative in his speech is entirely consistent with the actions of the Hungarian government since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Budapest’s priority is to maintain frictionless relations with Moscow, and the Orban government also constantly questions the EU’s sanctions policy against Russia. In June, Hungary threatened to veto a sixth EU sanctions package, only to remove the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, from the sanctions list. And this after Hungary has already secured an exemption from the European embargo on Russian oil supplies.

As the European Union urges member states to reduce their dependence on Russian gas, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjarto met with his Russian counterpart in July to negotiate an additional 700 million cubic meters of gas from Russia. It is worth remembering that, in February, Orban met with Putin and discussed increasing the gas supply by 1 billion cubic meters to the 4.5 billion cubic meters already available – in the hope that a deal can be concluded before the elections. to the Hungarian Parliament in April. The plan failed.

Flirting with the Kremlin Won’t Save Orban’s Social Policy

A few days ago, the deal appeared to have closed, but its volumes turned out to be much lower than expected. In August, Hungary will receive another 52 million cubic meters of gas through the Turkish Stream pipeline. And that’s taking into account the fact that Russia, due to the restrictions it has imposed on the supply of gas, which enters Hungary through Austria, pumps much less than stipulated in the contracts.

Thus, Orban’s social policy, which in many ways had ensured his high popularity among voters over the past 10 years, was under threat. The head of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet, Gergel Gulyash, said on July 13 that the government would no longer provide unlimited subsidies for utility bills. According to him, as of August, residents will pay market prices for gas and electricity for volumes that exceed the average level of consumption.

Hungary fought with allies in Poland

In this sense, the advantages of his government’s pro-Russian policy are very dubious for Hungary. At the same time, this is unlikely to lead to a convergence of Hungary’s policy towards Moscow with the course followed by Budapest’s western allies. In addition to Brussels and Washington’s regular criticism of Hungary’s rule of law violations, which have long been a troublesome case in the EU, Orban’s policy towards Russia has angered his most important ally – the Polish government under the leadership of the government. national Conservative Party of Law and Justice (ZiS).

According to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the paths of Poland and Hungary diverged. Yes, and Orban himself said that the issue of cooperation between the two countries should be postponed until the end of the war in Ukraine. The other two members of the Visegrad Group, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, largely withdrew from Hungary even before the war. Budapest’s pro-Russian course deepened the divisions even further.

Orban seeks to create an international alliance of right-wing forces

The split between Hungary’s FIDES-Hungarian Civic Union and Poland’s Law and Justice party has hampered Orbán’s efforts to forge a new alliance of far-right parties in the EU, including Marine Le Pen’s French National Rally and the Italian League. . However, he will try to continue to maintain relations with all these political forces in the hope that they will come to power in the future.

Orban’s speech at the opening of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas in early August, in which he expressed his support for former US President Donald Trump and hope for his return to the White House in 2024, shows that the Hungarian Prime Minister is committed to long-term international cooperation.

Orban’s attempts to put everything on the same card also indicate that he will not improve relations with the current leadership of the United States and most European countries. Therefore, a further deepening of the conflict between Budapest and the western allies cannot be ruled out.

Hungary is turning into a toy of anti-Western forces

At the same time, Hungary will not leave the EU and NATO, as this is not in Orban’s interest. However, his lament over the decline of Western civilization and his favorable gestures towards the West’s opponents – Russia and China – will remain in Hungary’s foreign policy toolkit, and its Western partners cannot escape it.

With these actions, Orban is trying to give Hungary leeway, but in fact he is achieving the exact opposite. By undermining a Western country that is now seen as an unreliable partner, Hungary could become a pawn for forces that will try to undermine the alliances in which it participates.

Zsuzsanna Weg is a researcher at Viadrina European University and also works for the US German Marshall Fund. The article only reflects the opinion of the author and not of the organizations in which she works.