PM Orbán: Ukrainians will not win on the battlefield, EU leaders unfit

Change is needed in Brussels because the current leaders of the European Union are unfit to handle the fluid situation in Ukraine and migration, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday.

National consultation starts again

Orbán who is attending a two-day EU summit, said a new strategy for Ukraine was needed, which is why changes were needed in the EU leadership, which may be secured in the upcoming European Parliament elections.

“In times of peace … these would be good leaders, but now when there are … giant waves, we certainly won’t succeed with the current leaders,” he said in the public media centre in Brussels.

European leaders able to coordinate the work of prime ministers in difficult times must be sought in the EP elections, he added.

Changes, he said, were also needed in the EU in connection with migration and economic policy because Brussels had come forward with “such impossible proposals” such as a demand that Hungary abolish its schemes subsidising household energy bills, taxing excessive bank profits and the interest rate cap “which protects families”.

Orbán said the seriousness of the situation called for another National Consultation survey. He said the public survey was “a good way of asking some very serious questions, of which there are 10-11 now, and to give an opportunity to people to express their opinion.”

The millions of responses regularly received in such surveys “establish broad support behind the government, and the government can then conduct talks in Brussels with a self-assured position against the hurricane headwinds from Brussels,” he added.

Meanwhile, Orbán said that the budget proposal put forward at the EU summit in Brussels was deemed to be “undeveloped and unfit” for serious negotiations. He said the European Commission must now “come up with a more serious proposal”.

Brussels demands money

The 7-year budget adopted three years ago was still in effect, he said in the interview given in the Public Media Centre in Brussels.

“We’re not yet halfway and the Brussels money-grabbers are already coming and demanding we give another 100 billion euros…” he said, noting requests for more money for Ukraine and funds for handling migration.

Some of the latter, he said, may be spent on protecting the external border, and this “may yet be discussed”. The rest would go towards distributing migrants already in Europe among member states and setting up migrant camps, he said.

Orbán added migration brought with it terrorism, crime and conflicts from places “thousands of kilometers from here”.

Such conflicts have already made their way to the streets of big European cities, he said. Hungarians, he added, did not understand their significance yet “because we do not have them”.

Commenting on financial support for the war in Ukraine, he said: “Hungary cannot afford it and does not want to afford it.” It sees no reason why Hungarian tax-payers’ money should be sent to a neighbouring state for anything other than humanitarian aid, he said.

Before spending money, the goal must be clearly defined and the resources allocated to it, he added.

It’s clear that the Ukrainians will not win on the battlefield

At the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the EU’s plan was “to start a defensive war” and Ukrainians “should give their blood, while the EU gives money and weapons, because there was a realistic chance to win on the battlefield”, he said.

Orbán said that whereas this may have once been a realistic scenario and it had been worth talking about giving money to achieve this strategic goal, “by now everybody knows, but they are afraid to say, that this strategy has failed”.

“It’s clear that the Ukrainians will not win on the battlefield and the Russians will not be defeated on the battlefield, and there is no talk about the Russian president losing his position,” Orbán said.