Orbán says Hungary is ‘exempt’ from the conflict: tell that to his friend in Moscow | György Dalos

In this, one of a series of essays on the war in Ukraine from countries in or neighbouring the former Eastern bloc, a Hungarian historian asks how long the country can remain on the fence

The invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 will go down in the annals of European history. Russia's undeclared war has cast an almost apocalyptic shadow. And it has dramatically altered the relationships that had prevailed between east and west since the collapse of the USSR. Whenever or however this armed conflict ends, it will undoubtedly take a long time for a new peace-guaranteeing equilibrium to be established. At the very least, the European Union and Nato now have to reckon with a hostile power on their borders and to prepare for a new phase of the cold war.

Hungarians voted in general elections just weeks after the invasion, in April, and it seems reasonable to assume that the war next door had an influence on the result. Given the climate of fear that the devastating special military operation" created, Hungarians voted to keep Viktor Orban's Fidesz in power rather than risk an untested six-party coalition. This assumption also underlies Orban's response, which is to stay out of the conflict to the point of being exempted", a position that has been condemned as a betrayal by Hungary's western allies. Hungary refuses to allow arms shipments destined for Kyiv to transit Hungarian territory and blocks the extension of EU sanctions against Russia to the energy sector. This latter stance is intended to enable an already controversial Russian-Hungarian project to build a nuclear power plant on the Danube (Paks II) to go ahead unaltered.