Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow Friday to shore up Hungary’s energy provides and talk about efforts to finish the struggle in Ukraine.
Having spurned possibilities to scale back its dependence on Russian fossil fuels, Hungary was dealing with a violent economic shock after the Trump administration final month imposed sanctions on Russia’s two greatest oil producers. Before the sanctions had been introduced, Orbán had warned that, with out energy imports from Russia, Hungary’s economic system could be introduced “to its knees.”
But Orbán, a hard-right populist and a darling of the MAGA motion, was spared that shock after US President Donald Trump granted Hungary a one-year exemption from the sanctions, saying it had been “difficult” for his ally to wean the nation off Russian oil since it’s landlocked.
“We recently travelled to Washington to secure Hungary’s exemption from the American sanctions on Russian energy: we succeeded. Now we must take the next step, guaranteeing that deliveries to Hungary continue without interruption,” Orbán wrote on social media Friday.
“This is why I am going to Russia today: to make sure Hungary’s energy supply remains secure and affordable this winter and in the year ahead,” he added.
Although Trump, explaining why he was contemplating granting Hungary an exemption, mentioned it had been “very difficult for him (Orbán) to get the oil and gas from other areas” since “they don’t have ports,” analysts have disputed this reasoning.
After Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, European Union nations moved to slash Russian energy imports in a bid to deplete the Kremlin’s struggle chest. However, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic – three Central European nations – got an exemption from a ban on importing Russian crude oil, giving them time to scale back their reliance on Moscow.
While the Czech Republic has since phased out Russian crude oil, Hungary and Slovakia used the exemption to deepen their dependence. Russian crude oil made up 86% of all Hungarian purchases of crude in 2024, up from 61% pre-invasion. So far this yr, 92% of Hungary’s crude oil imports have been from Russia.
Slovakia, in the meantime, is “almost 100% dependent” on provide from Moscow, in accordance to a report in May from the Center for the Study of Democracy and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Isaac Levi, an analyst at CREA, instructed NCS earlier this month that the newest US exemption is a “terrible and unnecessary mistake that will allow over €1 billion ($1.2 billion) to flow into the Kremlin’s war chest.”
He mentioned the Trump administration’s rationale for the exemption was not credible, for the reason that Czech Republic, one other landlocked nation, now not imports Russian crude oil and has decrease gasoline costs on the pump than Hungary. “This clearly shows that the oil flows that continue to finance Putin’s war in Ukraine are entirely unnecessary,” Levi mentioned.
During Friday’s assembly in Moscow, Orbán and Putin additionally mentioned current US-led efforts to finish the struggle in Ukraine. Putin didn’t rule out Friday the likelihood of a summit in Budapest with Trump, Russian state media reported.
Putin and Trump had agreed in October to meet in the Hungarian capital to talk about ending the battle, however these plans had been swiftly shelved, with Trump saying he didn’t need the talks to be a waste of time.