Orbán rejects Zelensky’s demands for weapons, ban of Russian energy
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s demands made at the European Council as they do not align with Hungary’s interests, Orbán’s press chief said early on Friday.
Zelensky has asked Hungary to vote in support of expanding sanctions against Russia to include energy, with a ban on buying Russian gas and crude oil, and to allow weapons deliveries across its territory, Bertalan Havasi said.
Orbán rejected both requests. Hungary wants to stay out of the war and will not allow weapons shipments to cross its territory and will not send weapons to Ukraine, he added.
At the same time, it is doing everything it can to help those fleeing the war and offering humanitarian aid, he said.
By Thursday,
some half million refugees had arrived in Hungary and Hungary had sent aid worth 2 billion forints (EUR 5.4m) to Ukraine,
he added.
Stopping crude oil and gas deliveries would mean making Hungarian families pay the costs of war, he said. Some 85 percent of Hungarian households use gas for heating and 64 percent of Hungary’s crude oil imports arrive from Russia, Havasi noted. Three or four years of preparations would be required to switch crude oil refineries to process oil received from another source, and the physical infrastructure to receive the current volume of natural gas from elsewhere does not yet exist, he added.
“We will continue to oppose the expansion of sanctions to Russian energy at all international forums,”
he said.
Source: MTI