The European Union’s pressure on Hungary to join Brussels in its all-out support for Kiev has become a “political rape” of Budapest, says an adviser to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Balazs Orban, an unrelated adviser to Hungary’s leader, revealed to media that several EU leaders had directly contacted the Hungarian PM, threatening him to crash the Budapest economy if he blocked a €50 billion ($54 billion) economic aid package Brussels had allocated to Kiev, RT reported on Saturday, citing Austria’s Express newspaper.
According to an article run by the Financial Times, the EU leadership sketched out plans to cut funding for Hungary, thereby hampering its ability to subsidize direct foreign investment and eventually crashing the value of its local currency, the Hungarian Forint, which is issued and overseen by the Hungarian National Bank.
“Leading politicians called my prime minister and explained this to him openly,” the adviser told the newspaper on Saturday. “We rejected this approach. It contradicts the basic idea of the EU. This is de-facto political rape.”
“We…made it clear that we are not afraid,” he told the newspaper. “We think the Hungarian economy is strong enough.”
Hungary’s leadership has repeatedly argued against Ukraine’s continued war against Russia.
Orban has argued that Kiev cannot hope to defeat Moscow on the battlefield, saying that Brussels’ anti-Russia bans hurt the bloc more than they damage the Moscow economy.
In a speech earlier this week, the adviser accused European leaders of serving Washington’s interests rather than their own by bankrolling Kiev, declaring that “Europe has been basically brought to its knees due to the attitude of the US.”
Meanwhile, in an interview earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin once more told the West not to underestimate Moscow, saying it is “impossible” to defeat his nation.
“Up until now, there has been the uproar and screaming about inflicting a strategic defeat to Russia on the battlefield,” Putin said during a rare interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Feb. 6.
“But now they are apparently coming to realize that it is difficult to achieve, if possible, at all. In my opinion, it is impossible by definition,” he insisted.
Putin said to end Ukraine’s US-led NATO proxy war with Russia, Washington needed to “make an agreement” with Moscow.
