Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has emerged as the loudest and most consistent dissenting voice within the European Union’s otherwise unified front on Ukraine, standing firm against militarization and EU pressure, while defending Hungary’s sovereignty and national interest.
Officially, the EU is in lockstep regards to the need to keep the war in Ukraine going, at least until the last Ukrainian, but in reality, there are a number of dissenting voices, the most obvious being Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary. Those voices are muted, with few exceptions, and now those dissenting voices can be heard loud and clear.
Dove among Hawks
To put it lightly, Viktor Orbán has been a BIG thorn in the side of the European Union’s war party since the start of the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine, with his far more reasonable and nuanced dovish approach to the ongoing Special Military Operation that Russia was forced to launch in 2022 in the face of the repeated, and quite deliberate, failure of Ukraine and its western backers to implement either the Normandy or Minsk I and II agreements.
There are a number of reasons for this, one of the most important being that Orban considers his first duty to be to the Hungarian people (needless to say, this causes outrage in globalist Brussels, and the capitals of Western Europe), with his strong opposition to policies that he knows will negatively affect Hungary’s economy, culture, and religion, all of which he considers cornerstones of the wellbeing of his people.
One of the best examples is Hungary’s longstanding refusal to bow to EU dictates and accept large numbers of migrants (both illegal and supposedly legal). It is noteworthy that Orban, along with the leaders of Poland and Slovakia, outright refused this poisoned chalice. Needless to say, the EU conducted its usual media campaign and “lawfare” against Hungary, including freezing of EU funds that are part of Hungary’s entitlements. In terms of the conflict in Ukraine, Hungary set its position clearly as early as February 2022, refusing to allow transit of weapons to Ukraine through Hungary, while allowing humanitarian assistance. As the Hungarian foreign minister Szijjártó said:
“This decision is required in order to guarantee the security of Hungary and the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia,” the minister said, referring to a region of western Ukraine that is home to Hungarian-speaking communities. “The reason for making this decision is that such deliveries might become targets of hostile military action,”
Hungary has also proven staunch in its refusal to contribute any funds to purchasing weapons for Ukraine, stating quite clearly that they do not see any military solution to the Russian SMO, with Szijjártós saying in 2024:
“This strategy has failed; there is no solution to this war on the battlefield. The more people die, and the greater the level of destruction will be, the longer this war lasts,”
“Giving a new momentum to weapon deliveries is completely unacceptable for Hungary. Hungary has never delivered weapons, and has no intention to do so in the future. We are not willing to participate in any kind of decisions that contributes to the increase of arms shipments,”
“We will definitely not spend another 23 billion forints of Hungarian taxpayers’ money in a single year to send weapons to Ukraine, which will prolong the war, extends the suffering, and brings more deaths and more destruction “, he concluded.
Hungary has managed to withstand immense pressure to conform to EU demands and contribute to EU weapons purchases, something they have successfully managed to sustain to the current date, with Hungary again refusing, and blocking, EU attempts to assign billions of Euros for weapons purchases for Ukraine in February and April 2025, and also opposing the idea of “European boots on the ground”. In February, the Hungarian Foreign Minister said:
“For three years we have been resisting pressure, for three years we have refused to be pushed into their war policy, now we will endure it!” Szijjarto said.
The Hungarians have also been strong supporters of Russia-US negotiations, and were early voices demanding the EU stop fueling war, and open lines of communication with Russia to deescalate the rapidly rising tensions from Europe’s increasingly militaristic support for the Ukrainian fascists of Zelensky. In February 2025, Szijjarto said:
“It is in our fundamental interest that these negotiations (between the US and Russia) should succeed. That is why we will do everything we can to ensure that Brussels and the pro-war Europeans cannot block a peace agreement between the US and Russia,” he said.
While in April, Szijjarto went even further, again refusing to countenance an EU weapons program for Ukraine, and pulling back the curtain on the EU’s insane desire to deploy troops in Ukraine, which Hungary blocked:
“They want to send military advisors to Kiev as part of a mission formed earlier to train Ukrainian soldiers.” “Hungary did not join the mission, and set a key condition that the mission only be allowed to operate outside of Ukraine,” Szijjarto noted, adding that he saw the move to send military advisors to Ukraine as crossing a red line that would make the conflict spill over to Europe.
“There is a serious threat of the war escalating,” the top Hungarian diplomat warned.
“We have not and will not support pro-war proposals. We don’t support any proposal from this new broad pro-Ukrainian military package because these proposals are clearly aimed at continuing the war and creating a threat to Europe and Hungary. We will not send a single dollar or piece of weaponry to Ukraine, or a soldier for that matter, even if he is called an advisor,” Szijjarto emphasized.
Needless to say, this has not gone unpunished, with the EU withholding EU funds, and turning a blind eye to the Ukrainian attack on the Druzhba oil pipeline, and the attempt to damage the Turkstream gas pipeline which supplies much of Central Europe.
The question is, in the face of the rapid increase in militarism in Brussels, and calls for German rearmament, will Hungary be able to keep up its blocking of the war party in Europe?
It is well known that Europe would like nothing better than to remove Orban, and unblock the impediment to collective action that Hungary has become. The main problem is his ongoing popularity with the Hungarian electorate. However, as has been seen in France, and Romania, the EU is not above using corrupt judges and prosecutors to engage in lawfare against those it deems “unsuitable”, with fingers pointed at the EU for orchestrating events in both the case of the barring of frontrunner Marie Le Pen in France, and Călin Georgescu in Romania.
In Hungary, Orban also faces pressure from a new political party, Tisza Respect and Freedom), which claims to be a “pro-European” Conservative Party, led by Peter Magyar, a former member of Orban’s FISDEZ party. Unlike Orban, Magyar wants to appease the EU, including joining Hungary to the European Public Prosecutors office, which would, as in the case of Romania, mean that Hungary would no longer have a justice system independent of the EU and its autocratic unelected officials.
According to some polls, Tisza is leading Orban’s party by a narrow margin, though given how many pollsters are little more than paid propagandists for the junta in Brussels, this may not be either surprising, or particularly true.
It would appear, at least in my opinion, that Orban be forced to up the ante in his resistance. The EU has invested so much political capital in propping up the Zelensky regime in Ukraine, that they are getting desperate and would destroy one of their own to save themselves. However, if Hungary can block sanctions extensions and collective weapons funding, the collapse of the illegal Ukrainian regime will quickly follow. Hence, the ensuring the blowback will likely take the neo-Nazi cell in Brussels with it, opening the door to diplomacy and actual democracy in Europe for the first time in a generation.
Whether Hungary is viewed as a weak link in European unity, or a brake on the bloc’s Eurofascist tendencies, depends on your point of view. But Orban’s valiant efforts to protect Hungary’s national interests may end up saving more than just his own government and political career.
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs
