Orban Is Right: Ukraine Has Truly Become Hungary’s Enemy

It’s also the enemy of Europe’s conservative-nationalists, who’d be left leaderless if Kiev and Brussels succeed in ‘democratically deposing’ Orban during early April’s next parliamentary elections and replacing his leadership of their movement with a collection of anti-Russian Polish figures.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban recently declared that “As long as Ukraine demands that Hungary be cut off from cheap Russian energy, Ukraine is not simply our opponent, Ukraine is our enemy.” This followed him accusing Ukraine of meddling in Hungary’s next parliamentary elections in early April, which echoes last summer’s assessment by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service and his own Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, with all this following last spring’s referendum meddling accusations.

As was explained here at the time, Orban claimed that Ukraine conspired to manipulate the results of the poll over whether to support its EU membership plans, which coincided with Hungary reportedly downing a Ukrainian drone and tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions on espionage-related grounds. These escalating tensions are occurring amidst Kiev’s persecution of its ethnic Hungarian minority that was described more at length here. Orban also just accused Ukraine of treating them as “cannon fodder”.

No self-respecting state can have normal ties with any state that treats its co-ethnics in such a terrible way, let alone while threatening its energy security and meddling in its elections. That’s the behavior of a bonafide enemy state, not simply a renegade former partner with whom ties are presently tense. By explicitly drawing attention to this political reality, Orban is also implying that opposition leader Peter Magyar is Ukraine’s ‘Manchurian candidate’, thus making support for him informally akin to treason.

To be clear, Hungary isn’t the ‘dictatorship’ that its political adversaries in the EU and Ukraine claim, so folks can openly support Magyar without fear of persecution. Nevertheless, it’s abundantly clear that Magyar would essentially function as a joint proxy of EU and Ukrainian interests in Hungary if he replaces Orban as Prime Minister, which would fundamentally shift its foreign policy. Radical energy decoupling from Russia at huge financial cost to Hungarians would be likely and arms might even be sent to Ukraine.

Hungary might also begin the accelerated adoption of the euro at the expense of its existing fiscal sovereignty under the forint. On the ideational front, Hungary probably wouldn’t remain the center of European’s conservative-nationalist movement, which could instead shift to Poland. In that event, the aforesaid movement might then become infused with a distinctly anti-Russian character, unlike the pragmatic approach towards Russia pioneered by Orban and his continental like-minded allies.

Roman Dmowski, one of the godfathers of Polish nationalism who was diplomatically indispensable to the revival of Polish statehood, famously warned that “some people hate Russia more than they love Poland.” He elaborated that “such patriotism, which thinks primarily about revenge on the enemy, and not about the benefits of one’s own nation, is an extremely dangerous threat, because it is a direct path to national suicide.” Such a fate might befall Europe’s conservative-nationalist movement if this happens.

Ukraine therefore isn’t just Hungary’s enemy, but also the enemy of Europe’s conservative-nationalists, who’d be left leaderless if Kiev and Brussels succeed in ‘democratically deposing’ Orban and replacing his leadership of their movement with a collection of anti-Russian Polish figures. The movement might then either be co-opted by such forces or fracture into less influential factions, with either outcome serving the geopolitical interests of Europe’s ruling liberal-globalists and Ukraine’s allied ruling clique.