Hungarian PM shows no sign of backing down while Volodymyr Zelenskyy urges EU to resolve dispute
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, will face pressure from other EU leaders to stop blocking a vital €90bn loan for Ukraine over a political dispute about an oil pipeline.
Ahead of an EU summit on Thursday, Orbán, who faces elections next month, showed no sign of backing down in his veto of the loan. He said he would not allow it until the damaged Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline supplying Hungary with Russian oil via Ukraine was repaired.
“If there is no oil, there is no money,” Orbán said in a video message on Tuesday posted after the publication of a letter from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying “all possible efforts” to repair the Druzbha pipeline were under way.
Orbán said he had made it clear to the European Council president, António Costa, that Hungary’s position was unchanged. “If President Zelenskyy wants to receive his money from Brussels then he must reopen the Friendship [Druzhba] oil pipeline,” he said.
