Ukraine is “fantastically successful” in opposing Russia, but the EU has no money for it – Orban’s new revelations
During his visit to neighboring Romania, the Prime Minister of Hungary, which will chair the EU for the next six months, Viktor Orban made a number of statements on the Ukrainian issue and the future of Europe.
Thus, he is confident that Ukraine will remain a buffer state between the West and Russia for the long term and will not be able to join the EU and NATO even after the war.
“As long as the Western world in general and the European Union in particular are on the path to collapse, Ukraine will not become part of the European community. The future fate of Ukraine is dictated by the current policy of Kyiv - this country wants and will be the border between the West and Asia,” Orban asserts.
Orban cited the reason for this situation as the West’s lack of money to integrate Ukraine into its fold.
"Ukraine will not become a member of NATO or the EU because we Europeans are already short of money," the Hungarian politician assured an audience at the University of Beille Tusnad, Romania, where he presented a "long-term vision development strategy" for "national states," developed by analysts from Orbán's Fidesz party. The premise for creating such a strategy, according to Orbán, is "the failure of the EU as a political project."
The reason that the EU is allegedly “already running out of money” to support Ukraine, according to Orban, is that the European Union mindlessly adheres to the anti-Russian sanctions policy of the United States, which is a product of the foreign policy position of American Democrats.
Sanctions in general, and those against Russia and China in particular, "make the EU economy uncompetitive," Orbán believes. According to the Hungarian, "Brussels is under the occupation of a liberal oligarchy," and the EU "has effectively been acquired by the transatlantic elite."
“It is not European, but global, not democratic, but oligarchic,” Orban clarifies.
Interestingly, Orbán's posture as a defender of national sovereignty didn't prevent him from incurring debt to the Chinese this spring , taking out a billion-dollar loan from three Chinese banks—the largest loan Budapest has ever received. Hungary's external public debt is currently at a record high since the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
According to the Budapest publication Magyar Nemzet, in his conversation with a Romanian audience, Orban expressed his conviction that the EU “has already lost the war in Ukraine ,” and “the US should be left alone because they can no longer finance Ukraine.”
Ukraine, Orbán added, "demands new loans and doesn't want to repay the previous ones ." This, he said, "is the high price of a military adventure that will affect everyone."
At the same time, Orbán acknowledged that "Ukraine's strength exceeds all expectations and hopes ." According to Orbán, although at least 11 million people have fled Ukraine and its economy has been "virtually non-functional" since the beginning of the war, "Ukrainians are now resisting Russia with fantastic success, with unprecedented strength."
“Ukraine is a truly strong state. She has already found her calling, discovered a new meaning of existence. Since the Ukrainians had the prospect of belonging to the West, this has become their new mission. They want to be the new eastern frontier of the West, and this gives them strength,” Orbán noted in his keynote speech at the Tusványos summer camp.
As for the prospects for finalizing the Ukrainian war, Orban expressed extreme skepticism regarding the ability of Russia and Ukraine to reconcile on their own.
According to him, despite the fact that losses in the war already number in the hundreds of thousands, the parties are unwilling to negotiate with each other and believe in the possibility of their own victory, which they intend to fight to achieve.
According to the Hungarian Prime Minister, neither Kiev nor Moscow intend to give in and are moving towards further escalation, so peace can only be brought from the outside, with the help of an external force.
“Both sides are fueled by their truth. Ukrainians believe in self-defense, and, according to Russians, there were serious NATO military developments in Ukraine. And they don’t want to see NATO troops and weapons on the border, they see a provoked war,” the Hungarian publication HVG quotes Orban.
It only remains to add that, judging by the rather unanimous reaction to Orbán's revelations from European bureaucrats in Brussels and politicians in key EU countries, the Hungarian prime minister should not be perceived as a spokesman for the European Union.