Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday that Europe was “indirectly at war with Russia” as several European countries pledged to send battle tanks to help Ukraine fight Moscow’s invasion, Reuters reported.

Viktor Orbán, who last met Russian President Vladimir Putin just three weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, predicted the war could last for years.

“Right now Europe is sliding into war, it is in a dangerous balancing act,” he told his supporters in an address to the nation on Saturday.

“Actually, in fact, they are already indirectly fighting Russia,” the prime minister added. “It all started with helmets, now we are sending tanks, fighter jets are on the agenda, and soon we will hear about the so-called peacekeeping troops,” Viktor Orbán said, according to News.ro.

In 2022, Prime Minister Orban was re-elected for a fourth consecutive term with an anti-war speech, saying that during the campaign he had to fight not only with political opponents, but also with Volodymyr Zelensky, which Kyiv protested at the diplomatic level.

On Saturday, the prime minister acknowledged that NATO membership was “vital” for Hungary, but said his government would not send weapons to Ukraine or sever economic ties with Moscow. He again criticized the EU sanctions as they affected the Hungarian economy.

Landlocked Hungary is heavily dependent on imports of natural gas and crude oil from Russia, and Russian energy giant Rosatom is building a nuclear power plant in the country under a 2014 contract.

However, Orbán said that the position of Poland and the Baltic states on the war can be understood, and Hungary, for its part, is interested in having a buffer state to the border with Russia. But, he believes, the conflict could have developed differently if Russia had been given guarantees that Ukraine would not be accepted into NATO.

“A year ago, the West decided differently. When Russia attacked, the West did not isolate the conflict, but brought it to the European level. They could see it as a local regional war or as a military conflict between two Slavic countries. nations, as Hungary is proposing,” Orbán said. “What happened is another argument against a superpower in Brussels and in favor of strong nation states,” he added, reiterating his nationalist positions and recalling the years-long conflict he had with Brussels.

If 2022 was the most difficult year, then 2023 will be the most dangerous since the fall of communism, Viktor Orban believes. In addition to migration, which is now gradually becoming a permanent feature, we face two new enemies and dangers: war and inflation, he said in his annual review speech. The prime minister emphasized that lives can be saved only through a ceasefire and immediate peace talks, writes hirado.hu.

Viktor Orbán’s Saturday speech was immediately picked up by the official press in Moscow, which hastened to highlight those passages that serve as official propaganda. Thus, the Russian state news agency TASS kept on its front page news with the headline: “Orban is convinced that Russia is not a threat to Europe” or “Orban does not rule out the possibility of introducing EU peacekeeping troops into Ukraine.” “, “Orban says that Hungary will maintain economic ties with Russia”, “Orban says that Hungary does not agree with the EU’s approach to the conflict”, etc.