A bad week for Hungary’s strongman leader as Trump-Putin summit scrapped and US sanctions Russia

By Christian Edwards, CNN

(CNN) — Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was delighted to learn last week that Russia and the United States had chosen his country as the venue for another summit on ending the war in Ukraine.

Having positioned Hungary – a European Union and NATO member – as an ally of both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, Orbán was hoping to show the world that “the road to peace runs through Budapest.”

But his hopes were dashed after the Trump administration abruptly shelved plans for the Budapest summit and on Wednesday unveiled sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil producers – the first since Trump returned to the White House.

Although the sanctions aim to deplete Russia’s war chest, they could also wreak havoc on Hungary’s economy. Whereas almost all EU countries have diversified their energy mix away from Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Hungary’s dependence has deepened. Along with Slovakia, its fellow antiliberal Central European neighbor, Hungary is almost totally reliant on Russia for its oil imports.

Orbán is now reckoning with the grim consequences of his own energy policy. Alongside Washington’s oil sanctions, the EU on Thursday confirmed it would ban Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from 2027. Last month, Orbán told Trump that, without Russian energy imports, Hungary’s economy would be brought “to its knees.”

Against what he decries as the bland uniformity of Brussels, Orbán says he stands for “sovereignty” – Hungary’s right to chart its own course within the EU and forge ties with hardline leaders abroad. But Orbán’s quest for sovereignty – spurning EU efforts to diversify its energy supplies – has left his country perilously dependent on one country for fossil fuels.

The double blow of US oil sanctions and the LNG ban comes as Orbán, Europe’s longest-serving prime minister, is struggling to contain Hungary’s surging opposition movement led by Peter Magyar, a former Orbán loyalist-turned-arch-rival. While Orbán had hoped a Trump-Putin summit could shore up his support at home, he now faces a deepening economic crisis that could weaken his hand before a crucial election in the spring.

After Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, EU countries moved to slash Russian energy imports to cut off a major source of the Kremlin’s revenue. However, Brussels gave Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic an exemption from a ban on Russian crude oil, giving them time to reduce their reliance on Russia.

Instead, Hungary and Slovakia used the exemption to deepen their dependence. Hungary increased its Russian crude oil reliance from 61% pre-invasion to 86% in 2024. So far this year, 92% of Hungary’s crude oil imports have been from Russia. Slovakia, meanwhile, is “almost 100% dependent” on supply from Moscow, according to a report from the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

By May, Hungary and Slovakia’s crude oil purchases had sent the Kremlin 5.4 billion euros ($6.3 billion), the report found, saying this was “the equivalent of the cost of purchasing 1,800 Iskander-M missiles that have been used to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure and kill Ukrainian civilians.”

The crude oil imports flow through the Druzhba pipeline, which has been repeatedly attacked this summer by Ukrainian drones, in an effort by Kyiv to punish its neighbors for helping to fund Moscow’s war.

The CSD-CREA report said that Hungary could diversify its energy supplies, receiving non-Russian oil through Croatia’s Adria pipeline rather than Druzhba.

But Orbán has shown no sign of changing tack. In an interview with Hungarian state radio Friday, he said his government was “working on how to circumvent” the US sanctions, without providing further details.

Hungary’s intent to find workarounds to the US sanctions could provide the first major test of the Trump administration’s seriousness about enforcing them, said Elina Ribakova, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think tank based in Washington, DC.

Despite harsh rhetoric towards Russia from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said the decision to impose new sanctions on Russia was due to “Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war” in Ukraine, Trump has been less abrasive, saying he hoped the sanctions “won’t be on for long.” The US president also left the door open to the Budapest summit, saying “we’ll do it in the future.”

The success of the sanctions on Russia’s oil majors will depend on how they are enforced, including against a Trump ally like Orbán, Ribakova told CNN.

“Which will it be: A friendly Putin-Trump meeting in Hungary, or throwing Hungary’s administration under the bus if they try to evade sanctions?” she said. “I have no idea which way the cards will fall here.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.