Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in an interview released on Wednesday, defended the conclusion of a pact with Russia on Ukraine’s future, without reference to Crimea and the country’s entry into NATO.
“We need to make a pact with the Russians on a new security architecture that gives Ukraine security and sovereignty, but does not include NATO membership,” Orbán told Spain’s Europa Press agency.
In the interview recorded on August 21 and now being released on social media by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Orbán deemed it unrealistic that Kiev intended to reclaim the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
He also believed that the Ukrainian armed forces have little chance of winning the war that Russia started on February 24, 2022 due to the numerical superiority of the Russians.
“The Russians are much stronger, much more numerous than the Ukrainians,” Hungary’s prime minister said, according to the US agency AP.
For Orbán, the only way to end the war in Ukraine would be for Donald Trump to be re-elected as president of the United States.
“Call Trump back. Trump is the man who can save the Western world,” he said.
Orbán, 60 years old, leader of the nationalist party Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Union and prime minister since 2010, is considered the leader of the European Union (EU) countries closest to Putin.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, Orbán’s government has maintained close ties with Moscow and has threatened to block EU sanctions against Russia.
It also refused to authorize the transfer of Western weapons across the border Hungary shares with Ukraine.
In 2016, Orbán became the first European leader to support Trump’s presidential candidacy, a support he renewed in the 2020 election, in which the former Republican president was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden.
In May, opening a Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest, Orbán also argued that Russia’s war on Ukraine would not have happened if Trump had led the United States.
In the interview with the former Fox News host, Orbán praised Trump’s foreign policy and criticized the Joe Biden administration’s approach to war.
While Trump faces criminal charges for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election, Trump’s re-election would be “the only way out” of the war, he stressed.
Orbán criticized the multiple allegations against Trump as an abuse of power by the US government that would be unthinkable in Hungary.
“Using the legal system against political opponents – in Hungary, I think it is impossible to imagine. This was done by the communists. It’s a very communist methodology,” he said, quoted by the AP.
Orbán also lamented the Biden administration’s efforts to get the Hungarian government to improve the rule of law and human rights record.
Although Hungary is a member of NATO and an ally of the United States, “we are treated worse than the Russians,” he said.
Source: DN
