Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Hungary has regularly threatened to block the aid of the European Union (EU) in kyiv or to oppose sanctions against Russia. The return to the White House of Donald Trump, whose Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban shares, among other things, the desire to quickly end the war in Ukraine, has still hardened his positions and, today, the Europeans are concerned about it.
So far, the crisis has been avoided, each time in extremis. In mid-March, Hungary ended up validating the renewal of part of the sanctions against Russia-those affecting President Vladimir Putin, Sergei Lavrov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and some 2,400 close to the Kremlin. At the end of January, already, it had rallied at the last moment to the renewal of sectoral restrictive measures, which allowed the EU to freeze 200 billion euros in assets from the Russian Central Bank, to impose importing and export prohibitions and to cut Russia from Western financial circuits.
In Brussels, some imagine that Donald Trump asked his friend Viktor Orban not to exercise his veto right. While the American president seeks to convince Moscow to engage in a cease-fire agreement with kyiv and that he himself threatens to increase the American sanctions against Russia, he had, in any case, no interest in the Europeans to release the pressure.
You have 76.88% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
Source: Lemonde