As Budapest ‘Holds Europe Hostage’ Over Ukraine War Aid, Is This Strike Three for Hungary?

Hungary is blocking $550 million in European Union military aid to Ukraine. Of the 27 countries in the EU and of the 31 countries in NATO, Hungary stands out as a pro-Russia outlier. In contrast to Europe’s solidarity with Ukraine, Hungary refuses to send military equipment to its Western neighbor, refuses to let NATO send military aid to Ukraine across Hungary, and routinely blocks Ukrainian participation in high-level NATO meetings.While the rest of Europe radically cuts dependence on Russian gas to single digit percentages, Hungary relies on Russia for 80 percent of its gas imports. Gas, oil and nuclear deals often feature on the agenda of the Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjarto, when he visits Moscow. At home, news outlets controlled by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán routinely echo Russian talking points about the war in Ukraine.For some analysts, this could be the third war in a century where Hungary sides with the loser, though in this, the war isn’t over yet. In World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire fought alongside Germany and Turkey in a Triple Alliance against Russia and the Western powers. That defeat led to the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which deprived Hungary of 72 percent of its territory, its sea access, and half of its 10 biggest cities.Next up, Miklós Horthy, a former Admiral, sought to win back lost territories for his now land-locked nation by allying with Adolf Hitler and his thousand-year Reich.Now, Mr. Orbán sides with Putin’s Russia. Across Europe, this de facto alliance draws negative attention to Hungary, a nation of 10 million people.“Looks like Hungary is holding Europe, and the West, hostage over funding for Ukraine,” London-based financial analyst Timothy Ash wrote yesterday. “Maybe Mr. Orbán did not get the memo that this war is an existential threat to the West.”John Kampfner wrote yesterday in The New European that Mr. Orbán’s Hungary is “the Kremlin’s fifth column inside the EU.”Mr. Orbán, who is completing his 13th year in power this month, delights in stepping on toes. He says critics suffer from “Hungarophobia.”On May 9, Hungary’s new chief of defense forces, Gábor Böröndi, said on national television: “Let’s think of the Second World War: In 1939, the German-Polish war started as a local war, and what was the end? That escalation was not contained in time by a peace process, leading to the Second World War.” Poland’s ambassador to Hungary shot back with a public letter to Mr. Orbán accusing Hungary of “appeasement” of Russia.On May 12, it was Mr. Orbán’s turn to inflame the region. In a speech in Western Hungary, he compared the EU’s vision of “ever closer union” to Adolf Hitler’s plans for European “unity.” The Czech foreign minister, Jan Lipavský, shot back: “No one is forcing Hungarians to be part of this community if they feel this uncomfortable.”An independent Budapest think tank, Political Capital, recently studied 727 articles on Origo, a government-affiliated outlet that is Hungary’s third most visited news portal. “Headlines recall the rhetoric of the Soviet “peace movements” of the Cold War,” Political Capital reported. “They suggest that Ukraine and the United States are the aggressors, that Zelenskyy is crazy, reckless, and drunken, while the competent Putin is the one who is trying to avoid escalation.” Political Capital’s director, Péter Krekó, calculates that Russia’s massive embassy in Budapest has twice the staff of Russia’s embassies in Warsaw, Prague, and Bratislava combined.Last month, NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, told reporters: “All Nato allies have agreed that Ukraine will become a Nato member.” Mr. Orbán responded with a one-word tweet: “What?!”Ukrainian leaders largely stew in silence over the hostility coming from their Western neighbor. In February President Zelensky reportedly suggested in a closed-door meeting with a colleague that Ukraine blow up the Soviet-era Druzhba, or Friendship, pipeline that crosses Ukrainian territory carrying oil to Hungary from Russia. The Washington Post cites a classified U.S. intelligence document posted on the Discord messaging site: “Zelenskyy highlighted that…Ukraine should just blow up the pipeline and destroy Hungarian Viktor Mr. Orbán’s industry, which is based heavily on Russian oil.”After Mr. Szijjártó signed a series of energy deals last month at Moscow, a Zelensky economic adviser, Oleg Ustenko, told Politico: “If you’ve seen the video where Russians cut the head off a Ukrainian soldier — the Hungarians are paying for the knife.”Hungary’s animosity toward Ukraine is a legacy of the Treaty of Trianon. A century later, about 100,000 ethnic Hungarians live in Ukraine’s Carpathian region, an area once ruled by Hungary. In recent years, Hungary has supported 100 Hungarian language schools, issued Hungarian passports, and built roads and bridges into the region, known as Zakarpattia.Kyiv once dragged its feet on accepting Hungarian aid to build better roads. Ukraine’s unspoken fear was that Hungarian military units could use the roads to annex this chunk of Western Ukraine. This fear was echoed last fall when Mr. Orbán showed up at a soccer match wearing a scarf printed with a historical map of Hungary. The map included Zakarpattia. About that time, 42 percent of Ukrainians told the Rating polling agency that they see Hungary as an “enemy.”For now, Mr. Orbán seems happy playing the iconoclast, backing Putin and enjoying the support of some American and European political conservatives. Last July, Hungary’s leader confidently predicted: “The Ukrainians will never win a war against Russia.” Yet Budapest may be betting on the wrong horse. Russia has not won a battle in Ukraine since last summer. After Russia’s losses of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson, some military analysts connect the dots and predict more defeats for Russia this summer. A major Russian rout could lead to a Russian retreat from Ukraine.In such a power vacuum, the largest army on the Eurasian plane would be Ukraine’s. It would be 1 million strong, battle hardened, and possibly looking to settle scores. Conceivably, the new bridges and roads from Hungary to Ukraine could carry military traffic West. In this case, Mr. Orbán, a wily political survivor, may have to draw on the survival skills of a Hungarian who emigrated to the US in 1878, Erich Weisz. He was better known by his stage name, Harry Houdini.

As Budapest ‘Holds Europe Hostage’ Over Ukraine War Aid, Is This Strike Three for Hungary?

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