{"id":21608,"date":"2026-02-24T23:33:38","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T23:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=21608"},"modified":"2026-02-24T23:33:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T23:33:40","slug":"the-eu-is-going-to-ukraine-empty-handed-%e2%80%95-thanks-to-hungary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=21608","title":{"rendered":"The EU is going to Ukraine empty-handed \u2015 thanks to Hungary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“After a brutally cold winter in Ukraine<\/a>, months of supposed peace talks<\/a> that have produced little more than political theater, and with Russia showing no sign of stopping its barrage of attacks, the EU had been confident it could finally bring Kyiv some concrete help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the carefully choreographed support was spoiled when Hungarian Foreign Minister P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 announced his country would block Europe’s 20th round of Russian sanctions because of an oil dispute Budapest has with Ukraine, ratcheting up the two countries’ long-simmering feud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Hungary’s move marked a “new low” for Orb\u00e1n, Sweden’s Europe Minister Jessica Rosencrantz told POLITICO. “We\u2019ve seen in previous decisions that Hungary is not acting in a way of sincere cooperation” with other EU states. “That should send an alarm to many of us. We\u2019re seeing what Orb\u00e1n is doing: he\u2019s using Ukraine as a punching bag.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crux of Hungary\u2019s row is the Druzhba pipeline, which stretches 4,000 kilometers from eastern Russia to Central Europe, providing vast quantities of oil for Hungary and Slovakia. Both have exemptions from EU sanctions on imports of Russian refined oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pipeline has been offline since Jan. 27, when Ukrainian authorities said a Russian strike damaged it. But Budapest and Bratislava aren\u2019t buying that, accusing Ukraine of intentionally keeping the pipeline inoperative<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lithuanian Foreign Minister K\u0119stutis Budrys said he was \u201creally upset and frustrated,\u201d adding Hungary\u2019s move not only calls the EU\u2019s support for Ukraine into question but its unity and ability to act decisively when major decisions are constrained by unanimity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hope that Europe can deliver,\u201d he said. And \u201cthat tomorrow it won’t be the situation when we will be saying, \u2018We are sorry, 20th package is not there. We are sorry, \u20ac90 billion maybe next month, maybe somewhere in the future.\u2019\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/eu-ukraine-visit-hungary-blocks-russia-sanctions-funding-feud-viktor-orban<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“After a brutally cold winter in Ukraine, months of supposed peace talks that have produced little more than political theater, and with Russia showing no sign of stopping its barrage of attacks, the EU had been confident it could finally bring Kyiv some concrete help.
\nBut the carefully choreographed support was spoiled when Hungarian Foreign Minister P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 announced his country would block Europe’s 20th round of Russian sanctions because of an oil dispute Budapest has with Ukraine, ratcheting up the two countries’ long-simmering feud.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Hungary’s move marked a “new low” for Orb\u00e1n, Sweden’s Europe Minister Jessica Rosencrantz told POLITICO. “We\u2019ve seen in previous decisions that Hungary is not acting in a way of sincere cooperation” with other EU states. “That should send an alarm to many of us. We\u2019re seeing what Orb\u00e1n is doing: he\u2019s using Ukraine as a punching bag.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The crux of Hungary\u2019s row is the Druzhba pipeline, which stretches 4,000 kilometers from eastern Russia to Central Europe, providing vast quantities of oil for Hungary and Slovakia. Both have exemptions from EU sanctions on imports of Russian refined oil.<\/p>\n

The pipeline has been offline since Jan. 27, when Ukrainian authorities said a Russian strike damaged it. But Budapest and Bratislava aren\u2019t buying that, accusing Ukraine of intentionally keeping the pipeline inoperative. <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Lithuanian Foreign Minister K\u0119stutis Budrys said he was \u201creally upset and frustrated,\u201d adding Hungary\u2019s move not only calls the EU\u2019s support for Ukraine into question but its unity and ability to act decisively when major decisions are constrained by unanimity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that Europe can deliver,\u201d he said. And \u201cthat tomorrow it won’t be the situation when we will be saying, \u2018We are sorry, 20th package is not there. We are sorry, \u20ac90 billion maybe next month, maybe somewhere in the future.\u2019\u201d”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/eu-ukraine-visit-hungary-blocks-russia-sanctions-funding-feud-viktor-orban\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[552,728,923,272,355,969,314,1545,315,311,158],"class_list":["post-21608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-conflict","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-foreign-policy","tag-hungary","tag-international-relations","tag-invasion","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21609,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21608\/revisions\/21609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}