PM Orbán: Hungary attacked by Ukraine

Hungary has been taken hostage and placed under an “oil blockade“, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday. Orbán said he would consult Slovak counterpart Robert Fico by phone to coordinate further joint action, saying it was essential to ensure that Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky opened the Druzhba oil pipeline.

Orbán: Hungary under attack, under oil blockade

The prime minister said the blockade was targeting the Hungarian economy, warning that if no oil flowed through the pipeline, “economic chaos” would ensue.

Petrol prices could rise to around 1,000 forints per litre, he said, citing experts of oil and gas company MOL, and this would spark widespread price increases, in turn disrupting normal economic activity. “It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say chaos could result“.

He added that, since the country was under attack, defensive measures were necessary. Hungary has suspended diesel fuel shipments to Ukraine, will not support the 90 billion euro EU loan or the 20th sanctions package, and will oppose any Brussels measure benefiting Ukraine until the oil supply is restored, Orbán declared.

The prime minister said it was also conceivable that Hungary could stop providing electricity to Ukraine, though since Hungarians also lived on the other side of the border, this move would be made as a last resort.

Zelensky lies about the oil blockade

The prime minister said he had received no response to his letter addressed to Volodymyr Zelensky. The Hungarian charge d’affaires in Kyiv was summoned and “they said all sorts of things there“, he said, adding that he did not consider this a “serious response“.

Western Europeans, he said, did not understand Ukraine or central European relations, and they took Zelensky at his word. His explanation that the oil blockade was for technical reasons was “a lie“, he added. Ukraine, Orbán said, was unwilling to accept a fact-finding mission and “western Europeans have started to come to their senses“.

Referring to Nord Stream, he said Ukraine was capable of blowing up “anything“, adding that this was “state terrorism“.

Tisza tells fairy tale

Put to him opposition Tisza Party accusations that government moves to protect critical energy infrastructure were a scare tactic and a false flag operation was under way, Orbán called the charges a “fairy tale” motivated by Ukrainian payments to the opposition party.

Orbán insisted Ukraine had infiltrated Hungarian politics and financed the Tisza Party, adding that its leader’s trip to Ukraine had been organised by a “publicly known” spy identified by Hungary’s intelligence services. “The Ukrainians are up to their jugular in the Tisza Party,” he declared.

Peril of wae has never been this close

Ukraine, he said, was working to disconnect Hungary from Russian oil and to ensure that money from Brussels flowed to Ukraine. It also wanted Hungary to join the ranks of countries at war, he added.

“The peril of war has never been as close to Hungary as it is now, but we won’t allow ourselves to be dragged into it. We won’t provide weapons, and we will definitely not provide soldiers,” Orbán said.

“Everyone across Europe — apart from ourselves and Slovakia, and now even the Czechs are also shifting their tone — talks about this war as if it were our war, as though it’s western Europe’s war,” Orbán said. “And in their minds it is, but not in ours.“

“We sympathise with the Ukrainians and understand what’s happening, but we have nothing to do with this war, and we won’t take part in it,” he said.

Croatia must transport MOL’s oil to Hungary

The prime minister said Hungary expected Croatia to fulfill its contractual obligations. If a MOL tanker ship arrived in the Croatian port, the oil must be offloaded and sent to Hungary via the pipeline, he emphasised, adding that this was Croatia’s obligation, not a business opportunity. “They cannot afford not to deliver this oil to Hungary,” he declared.

Orbán noted that Druzhba was Hungary’s primary source of oil, while the one running through Croatia served as a auxiliary route. While Zagreb had proposed upgrading the Croatian route to a primary pipeline, potentially increasing capacity, Orbán said such a shift would require significant investment and testing.

“We need two pipelines: a primary and a backup,” he said, warning against dependence on a single source.

Orbán said the reason why he considered a proposal by Tisza’s energy chief that Hungary should wean itself off Russian oil dangerous was because “then we’ll be at the mercy of whoever controls the remaining pipeline.”

“So I don’t understand why Tisza’s energy chief, who came over from Shell, keeps spouting such nonsense, unless it’s because the moment Russian oil stops flowing through Druzhba and Croatia blocks oil flows as well, we’ll have no choice but to buy oil from somewhere else — say, Shell,” he said.

Russian oil is cheap

The prime minister underscored that Russian oil currently costs 13 dollars less per barrel than Western alternatives, a gap widening to 20 dollars when transport costs are factored in. Meanwhile, Orbán said a patriotic government was synonymous with security and with “no war“.

He said that as long as he was prime minister, Hungarians could rest assured that the country could not be forced into the war. The prime minister warned that the threat of war had “never been closer” since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, with risks escalating daily.

He said this was because the United States had withdrawn from military operations and scaled back support for Ukraine, while European leaders “want war“. Though Washington was continuing its diplomatic efforts for peace, he said, if no solution emerged soon, “they will abandon even that“.

European leaders wanted to win the war on the battlefield, rather than freeze the frontlines or seek peace, he insisted, noting the European Parliament’s recent call for a “multinational reassurance force” to be sent to Ukraine.

He said Ukraine’s push for EU membership was also escalating the risk of conflict, noting that the bloc’s treaties oblige all member states to defend any country under threat, creating a legal basis for direct involvement.

Hungarians’ money and Ukraine

“The next two to three years could bring Hungary’s most dangerous scenarios,” he warned, urging national unity to keep the country out of the conflict.

Orbán said Tisza, in a vote on whether to support Ukraine’s EU membership, supported it.

He said the government’s National Petition was launched because the Hungarian government was the sole voice insisting that Hungarians’ money must not be given to Ukraine.

The prime minister said the opposition Tisza Party and the Democratic Coalition were urging Hungary to join those countries supporting Ukraine.

“This is why we must hold a petition to resolve this case in Hungary,” he added.

“How can you say ‘no’ to Ukraine when they’re the ones financing you?” he said, insisting that Ukraine was providing IT support for Tisza and managing its campaign. “Ukraine’s goal is clear: to remove Hungary’s patriotic government,” he said.

Economic downturn

Orbán also sounded the alarm on Europe’s economic downturn, with mass layoffs sweeping Poland (200,000 jobs lost), Czechia (161,000), Romania (144,000), and Germany (129,000). “Europe’s aluminium industry has been brought to its knees, and the chemicals industry will soon follow,” he said. “Hungarians aren’t used to unemployment, but Europe is heading that way.”

Higher energy prices threatened Europe with mass unemployment and could spell the end of entire sectors of industry, Orbán said.

Due to the war and sanctions policies, Europeans pay three to four times as much for their energy as in the United States or China, Orbán said. Low costs enjoyed by the US and Chinese aluminium, chemicals and automotive industries allow them to squeeze out the products of their European peers, he added.

He hailed Hungary’s economy as a “remarkable success story”, crediting businesses, unions, and chambers of commerce for maintaining full employment and preventing industrial collapse. “While Europe’s auto sector is in crisis, Hungary’s is thriving,” he said, highlighting the country’s timely shift to electric vehicle production. The Mercedes-Benz plant in Hungary, he said, has hired its 5,000th worker and plans to recruit 3,000 more for EV manufacturing, even as other European nations shed jobs by the thousands.

Electric cars are the future

“If we hadn’t pivoted to electric cars and batteries, we’d be watching our auto plants close, not grow,” he said.

Orbán called it “unprecedented” that Hungary could deliver an 11 percent minimum wage hike, double family tax breaks, introduce a 14th month pension, exempt mothers from personal income tax and offer fixed-rate 3 percent mortgages, all while growth hovered at just 1 percent.

“Staying out of the war and keeping our jobs-based economy is the only way to stop living standards from falling, and even raise them,” Orbán said. To sustain this, he argued, extra profits generated in Hungary must stay in Hungary and be redirected to families. Since 2010, his government had redistributed over 15 trillion forints from multinationals, banks, and energy firms to fund social policies, he added.

“We cannot let multinationals like Shell or Erste take over our government and drain Hungary’s wealth,” Orbán declared, vowing to block profit outflows beyond what is strictly necessary for reinvestment.

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