00:00They spent 90 minutes yesterday trying to convince him to relent on this veto. They are furious. This
00:07is the most dramatic language I've seen the leaders use about Orbán ever, particularly
00:13Presidents von der Leyen and Presidents Kolsten. That's the clip you just heard. I mean, they
00:18normally would never, never use language like that, and they certainly never have about Orbán.
00:23But really, after 90 minutes went by, the leaders realized they were not going to get him to budge,
00:28and they really think it's because of that Hungarian election coming up on April 12th. And no one wanted
00:33to say this out loud last night after they were leaving the summit, but really the strategy now
00:38is to just hope that Viktor Orbán is voted out of office on April 12th. Just a reminder here,
00:44what happened is they were initially looking at this plan A of using frozen Russian assets to help
00:50Ukraine. The reason Ukraine needs all this funding is because the U.S. has pulled its support for
00:55Ukraine, and the EU needs to make it up. But that idea of using frozen Russian assets was vetoed by
01:02the Belgian prime minister, who was worried about the legal liability that money has held here in
01:07Belgium. So they went with Plan B, this 90 billion euro loan. In order to get that agreed, Viktor Orban
01:13and the Czech and Slovak prime ministers agreed not to block it, because it needs unanimous approval,
01:19as long as they themselves didn't have to contribute to it. But then a month ago, Viktor Orban said,
01:23no, I've changed my mind, because now he's angry that he says Ukraine is purposefully not allowing
01:29oil to flow through a pipeline from Russia to Hungary. Ukraine says the pipeline was hit by
01:35Russian missiles, and that's why the oil isn't flowing. Viktor Orban has accused President Zelensky
01:42of lying about that. There's a fact-finding mission there in Ukraine to establish the facts, but as I
01:47understand it, they haven't even been able to look at the pipeline yet. So that's where they are right
01:53now. I mean, the Belgian prime minister, Bart de Weyver, who's the one who vetoed Plan A, came the
01:58closest to really admitting the real strategy here, when he said that if Viktor Orban is still in place
02:04after that election on April 12th, then that's the, and Viktor Orban continues blocking this loan,
02:10that's the quickest path out of the European Union for Hungary. So from what I'm hearing, they're not going
02:17to go back to that original plan of using the frozen Russian assets just yet, because they think that this
02:23loan will get to Ukraine one way or another. They just need to wait out that election. And either Viktor
02:28Orban is voted out, or after the heat of the election campaign, he'll relent on this veto that he's really
02:35sticking to it, because he needs to be seen as being tough against the EU for that domestic audience. Indeed,
02:41that has been the
02:41central pillar of his re-election campaign, being tough on Ukraine and tough on the European Union. But he is
02:49trailing in the polls, and it looks like his challenger, Peter Magyar, if the election were held right now, would
02:54win. However, Orban has huge, huge assistance in this campaign from both Moscow and Washington. Reportedly, the
03:01U.S. vice president is going to be going there to Hungary in the coming weeks in order to campaign
03:06for
03:07Viktor Orban. So right now, on the EU's part, they say, no, no, no, the money is coming. The money
03:12is
03:12coming. We just need to wait until after April 12th. Viktor Orban denies that this is election
03:17politicking, but they really think this is all tied to the Hungarian election.
