00:00Meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban,
00:05a close ally of the White House, has seen Budapest securing a one-year exemption from
00:10sanctions on Russian oil and gas.
00:13Brussels-based geopolitical analyst Botan Felody highlights the tightrope Hungary continues to walk,
00:19balancing its reliance on Russian energy while maintaining favor in Washington,
00:23ahead of national elections next spring.
00:25The interest of the Hungarian Prime Minister in maintaining the access to Russian oil is important
00:32because several government-aligned entities have interest in the oil company's profit.
00:38So it has a very concrete outcome for Fidesz in the upcoming election year,
00:45whether they have these surpluses, both potentially in state budget and in government-aligned organizations.
00:52Having that said, Donald Trump is also keen on trying to make a deal with Russia,
00:58and Orban wants to be instrumental in that.
01:01That's why we had the discussions around the Budapest meeting of two sides, Russia and the United States.
01:08So this tightrope is actually working out on the diplomatic level.
01:13At the same time, we don't really see the payoffs on the Hungarian citizen side,
01:19because all the neighboring countries, like the Austrians or a bit further in the Czech Republic,
01:26could come off the Russian imports rather without a price surge,
01:31having the same prices as Hungary has currently on Russian oil.
01:35They have no problems at the petrol stations, and that means that it is feasible,
01:40but Hungary has not yet begun to shift away from Russian resources in the last three years since the full-scale invasion.
01:47Speaking on the possibility of a Trump-Putin meeting in Budapest,
01:51Botan said such a summit would serve more as a political opportunity for the Kremlin than a diplomatic breakthrough.
01:59Hungary cannot be negligible in any respect.
02:02On the one hand, it is a NATO member state and an EU member state, the ally of the United States,
02:07therefore ally of the measures that are being taken by NATO members.
02:14On the other hand, Orban himself and his government policy is also not neutral when it comes to the war.
02:21It is clear that Hungary does run a much more Russian-friendly stance among the EU member states,
02:28most of the most Russian-friendly.
02:30Vladimir Putin has just endorsed Orban openly at a public event in Russia in the last months.
02:37So that means that it is an EU head of government running for re-election being endorsed by Vladimir Putin.
02:44So if this meeting is taking place in Budapest, that is actually a diplomatic and a political win for Vladimir Putin to come to NATO and an EU member state to be able to fly in.
02:55Hungary is in the process of resigning from the International Criminal Courts Treaty,
03:00therefore already saying that they did not arrest Vladimir Putin, despite it's still running legal, international legal obligations.
03:08So for Putin, it is the biggest win, and it is just a very ephemeral win for and victory for Viktor Orban in his election campaign,
03:18dressed up by the government-friendly media for election purposes.
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