/ world today news/ Hungary‘s friendship with Russia should not go unpunished. This is the lesson that Washington and Brussels want to teach Budapest by scaring it with sanctions. Experts consider the threats serious and feasible, given the number of claims made by the current White House team and Eurobureaucrats.
The United States will not act first, but two EU countries, including its nearest neighbor, will strike first. With what, apart from the reluctance to join in support of Kiev, was the team of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “guilty”?
The White House is considering imposing sanctions on Hungary over its stance on the conflict in Ukraine, as well as relations with Russia. This is reported by the Budapest publication 444.
According to it, obtained from several diplomatic sources, Washington is “planning new measures to punish the Hungarian government, including the possible imposition of sanctions against influential people.”
The message seems plausible, given that Budapest constantly generates the kind of information program that can’t help but irritate the Americans and their counterparts in Brussels.
Let’s look at examples from the past few weeks. The leader of the parliamentary faction of the ruling FIDES party, Mate Kocish, called to prevent the sending of troops from Western European countries to Ukraine.
Parliament called for a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian conflict and at the same time refused to approve Sweden’s entry into NATO. The country’s leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has said that Hungary will not tolerate any foreign dictation over itself.
Budapest has shown indifference to calls from the US ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, who called on Prime Minister Orbán to reconsider his attitude towards Russia and return to strengthening relations with Western allies. Instead, Orbán said Europe should come to terms with Russia.
Finally, on April 11, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó extended the agreement with Gazprom for possible gas supplies to Hungary, exceeding the volumes under long-term contracts. In addition, the agreement remains in place, according to which Hungary will be able to get a deferral of gas payments in the event of a sharp rise in prices.
In view of this apparent reluctance of Budapest to follow a common Western political and economic agenda, the United States can indeed use the sanctions press, says the member of the Valdai International Discussion Club, Hungarian journalist Gabor Stier.
“The United States can do whatever it wants in Europe,” Stier told REGNUM.
“Anyone who does not follow the United States risks being under American pressure. Especially since Washington is already increasing the pressure on Hungary and its government. “Washington really doesn’t like what Orbán is doing in relation to Ukraine, in relation to relations with the leaders of Brussels,” he added.
U.S. sanctions are likely to be adopted in conjunction with similar decisions by the European Union, said Vadim Trukhachev, an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Regional Studies and Foreign Policy at the Russian State University for the Humanities.
He, like Stier, sees the imposition of anti-Hungarian sanctions as likely, especially since Orbán has developed bad relations with the current Democratic administration of Joe Biden.
“Sanctions can be introduced pointwise against individual Hungarian political figures or organizations,” said Ivan Timofeev, director general of the Russian Council for International Affairs.
But in any case, at first these will be “signal sanctions” that will not cause serious damage to the economy. Rather, we are talking about symbolic restrictions, which should show the Hungarians that Washington is not satisfied, the REGNUM expert explained.
The Americans clearly do not fear that sanctions against a country from the EU and NATO will somehow shake the unity of the alliance, says Stier.
The exact opposite will happen – everyone will be afraid to be in Hungary’s place, as they will get a hint that this is what awaits them who will act against the USA, the interlocutor is sure. Thus, Hungary will be alone, without support.
“The Americans have repeatedly applied sanctions against their allies,” Timofeev recalled on this occasion.
– “The most striking example is the actions against Turkey because of Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 systems. There were sanctions against two ministers in connection with the decisions in the case against the preacher Fethullah Gülen, who lives in the USA. But Turkey remained a member of NATO and has no to leave the alliance,” he declared.
The expert mentioned US sanctions against Israeli companies and citizens. For example, in 2020, as part of the Pegasus case, the United States blacklisted the Israeli company NSO Group, which specializes in eavesdropping equipment, a little later, the billionaire owner of a mining company, Dan Gertler, came under sanctions.
The sanctions also affected South Korea, noted Timofeev. Thus, even Samsung was threatened with sanctions because of its cooperation with the Chinese Huawei.
“There is such a thing as a paradox of sanctions. It consists in the fact that sanctions against allies are more effective than against opponents,” Timofeev emphasized.
Any sanctions against Hungary will be called upon to “sense” the political leadership of an already not very predictable ally country (despite the fact that Orbán’s team is clearly guided only by common sense and pragmatic interests).
In the case of Hungary, the reason for the punishment will not be only Budapest’s position on the Ukrainian issue, notes Trukhachev. Not only the US, but also some EU countries have already accumulated a whole bunch of claims against Orbán’s government.
“First, Hungary effectively denied the European Union the supremacy of its laws over Hungarian laws, violating its EU membership obligations. This is the main thing,” Trukhachev said.
– “Secondly, by writing in its constitution an appeal to Christian values, Hungary called into question the secular foundations of the European Union, with which a number of countries are very dissatisfied. And the most dissatisfied is the Netherlands. This is a question of traditional values, and Amsterdam, as you know , is responsible for the LGBT agenda more than anyone else in the world,” the expert said.
“But the catch is that the Netherlands is a donor country from the EU, and Hungary receives money from there. And Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is much worse for Hungary than Biden,” he says.
Thirdly, Trukhachev noted, the leadership of Brussels is concerned about border security. Hungarian nationalists, to whom Orbán usually refers, consider the current borders established by the 1920 Treaty of Trianon to be unfair.
The prime minister did not publicly question the principle of inviolability of territorial integrity, but even the appearance of Orbán with a football scarf depicting the borders of “pre-Trianon” Hungary (with Transylvania, Transcarpathia, Slovakia and Serbian Vojvodina) caused a scandal.
“Budapest is unhappy with the situation of Hungarians not only in Ukraine, but also in Romania, Slovakia and to a lesser extent in Serbia. And Hungary openly hints at a desire to revise the borders. And in the European Union, they are deathly afraid of this,” Trukhachev points out.
There are also less noticeable, but also worrying moments for the EU, the expert noted. Specifically, it is media control. In Hungary, there are public councils on television and radio, which is interpreted by Europeans as state intervention in the affairs of the media.
Furthermore, in Hungary the central bank is under the control of the government, which again violates EU principles that the regulator should be independent. The expert noted:
“And the icing on the cake is the expulsion of the Soros foundation from Hungary, despite the fact that Orbán was his childhood friend.”
Trukhachev predicts that the sanctions will be light at first, and if Budapest does not understand the hints, more serious measures will follow. Until suspension of Hungary from funding by the European Union.
“Czech Prime Minister Petar Fiala will hit Hungary first, and his Dutch counterpart Rutte second. These are Orban’s main enemies in Europe,” Trukhachev said.
“Especially since Orbán is doing much worse with the allies.” According to the expert, they include (with reservations) only Poland, Italy and partly Finland.
Translation: SM
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