The gap between Hungary and Ukraine started years ago when Ukraine undermined the rights of the Hungarian minority in its country. Orbán also openly admires autocrats.
10:05am•Updated 10:23am
During the war of aggression against Russia, many have been surprised by Hungary’s apparently good relations with Russia, as well as the country’s cold attitude towards neighboring Ukraine.
A researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki Katalin Miklóssyn according to the situation there are many explanatory factors. According to him, the background is not only Hungary’s dependence on Russian energy and the country’s economic interests.
Orbán’s Hungary on the road to Russia
The European Union has systematically criticized the development of Hungary’s rule of law and blamed the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán administration for violating human rights.
After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Orbán has openly declared that he wants to take Hungary in the direction of a dictatorship. Orbán himself calls his ideal state model “illiberal democracy”, where one strong leader directs a seemingly democratic political system.
According to Miklóssy, Orbán has said that he admires authoritarian countries like Russia, China and Turkey, where power is concentrated in a very few people.
– It’s about Orbán’s bottomless admiration for the Russian form of government, which controls society, the media and non-governmental organizations.
Over the years, Russia and China have made a lot of investments in Hungary, and the two countries have maintained diplomatic relations throughout the war of aggression. Hungary has been completely dependent on Russian energy since the 1960s, Miklóssy states.
– At the same time that other EU countries have begun to reassess their energy economy, Hungary has been completely unwilling to give up cheap Russian energy.
The feud with Ukraine started years ago
When Ukraine placed the Russian company Lukoil’s oil supplies passing through Ukraine under its sanctions last month, anti-Ukraine has increased even more in Hungary.
According to Miklóssy, the deterioration of relations between Hungary and Ukraine began years ago.
In 2017, Ukraine wanted to strengthen the position of the Ukrainian language in relation to Russian speakers. At that time, Russia had already conquered Crimea and there was a war in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian and Russian armed forces.
As the position of Russian speakers weakened, the position of other minority languages also weakened. Before the war, about 140,000 people of Hungarian background lived in Ukraine, and Orbán was very strongly against Ukraine’s new language law.
– When Ukraine ignored Hungary’s criticism at all, Hungary decided to go on the war path, so to speak. Hungary has opposed Ukraine’s NATO membership and will certainly block the country’s EU membership as well if Orbán is in power and relations between the two countries have not improved.
According to Miklóssy, relations between Hungary and Ukraine have grown colder every year. Hungary is the only EU member state that has not given Ukraine any military aid during the war, and it has not even allowed other countries to transport aid supplies to Ukraine through its own country.