Orban faces pressure to cut close ties with Putin

BUDAPEST (AP):

Hungary’s right-wing nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, has for more than a decade nurtured close political and economic ties with Russia, giving him the reputation as the Kremlin’s closest European Union ally.

For weeks, as Russian President Vladimir Putin amassed tens of thousands of troops along the borders of Ukraine, Hungary’s neighbour to the east, Orban avoided condemning the build-up and spoke emphatically against applying sanctions.

As tensions escalated, Orban even travelled to Moscow, where he met with Putin in the Kremlin, their 12th official visit in as many years, and lobbied for larger shipments of Russian gas.

But when Russia’s large-scale invasion commenced last week, Orban for the first time laid responsibility for the tensions and violence on Moscow in what could be a turning point in his more than decade-long, pro-Russia approach.

“Russia attacked Ukraine this morning with military force,” Orban said hours after the invasion began Thursday. “Together with our European Union and NATO allies, we condemn Russia’s military action.”

Though Orban neglected to mention Putin by name, or to call the “military action” an invasion, his apparent about-face was long awaited by his critics both in the EU and in Hungary.

It could also be a sign that he realises his posture towards Moscow is “not rooted on stable fundaments”, said Daniel Hegedus, a fellow for Central Europe at the German Marshall Fund.

“What we see is practically the collapse of Orban’s 12-year-long Russia policy,” Hegedus told AP. “I think (Orban) realised that Russia is a security threat in the region.”

A formerly communist country that was dominated by the Soviet Union for more than 40 years, Hungary has historically deeply distrusted Moscow, which ordered the brutal repression of an anti-Soviet uprising in 1956 that led to thousands of civilian deaths and some 200,000 refugees fleeing the country.

As the communist system in Eastern Europe neared its end in 1989, Orban, then a 26-year-old anti-communist leading a movement of young liberal democrats, demanded the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary in a speech to several hundred thousand people on Budapest’s Heroes’ Square.

But in recent years, Orban – whom critics accuse of increasingly authoritarian tactics since entering power in 2010 – has pursued a diplomatic and economic strategy he calls “Eastern Opening”, a policy which advances closer ties with autocratic countries to Hungary’s east amid what his government sees as Western decline.

DEPENDENCE

As part of that strategy, Orban has initiated a 12 billion-euro (US$13.6 billion) Russian-backed project to add two nuclear reactors to Hungary’s only nuclear power plant, financed primarily by a Russian state bank.

His government has also increased Hungary’s dependence on Russian natural gas, and in 2019 provided a headquarters in Budapest for the Moscow-based International Investment Bank (IIB), an institution with Soviet roots that critics say could be a conduit for Russian spying.

As the conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalates, Orban faces greater pressure than ever to choose between Moscow and Hungary’s Western partners in the EU and NATO military alliance – but is showing increasing signs that he may continue to straddle the line between the two.