WARSAW, POLAND – NATO alliance member Hungary has filed a protest with Ukraine, accusing Kyiv of an “outrageous and unacceptable” attack. The attack in question was a strike that severely damaged a Russian oil pipeline, but one that also supplies oil to the Hungarians.
The government of pro-Russian PM Viktor Orban then issued a warning to Ukraine about its current reliance on Hungary for electricity supplies. Ukraine’s response to Hungary’s protest was that Russia had started this war. Therefore any complaints about the consequences of attacks on Russian oil facilities should be forwarded to Moscow instead.
The Orban government in Budapest has consistently taken a different line from its NATO allies and the European Union (EU) on the Ukraine war. Budapest has also taken great pains to avoid any involvement in the conflict. It has not followed the path of other NATO members and third nations friendly to the alliance who are providing Kyiv with military and economic aid against Russia’s invasion.
Adding insult to injury, Hungary has publicly castigated the Western alliance for aiding Ukraine, yet has not remained neutral, instead maintaining friendly relations with Moscow in parallel. On more than one occasion, Hungary has faced strong criticism from NATO members like Poland, causing increasing conflict with other European states, as well as with Ukraine itself.
Hungary was unsurprisingly the only EU member not to co-sign a statement supporting Ukraine’s position on ending the war prior to the 15 August meeting in Alaska between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. At past summits, Hungary has tried to isolate Ukraine by consistently being against any plan for the beleaguered nation to join the alliance.
Striking Russian Oil Assets
The Ukrainian Armed Forces (ZSU) stated last week that they had attacked the Unecha oil pumping station located in Russia’s Bryansk region.
This pumping station is close to the junction where the Druzhba pipeline divides into three separate directions, one of which is the pipeline that provides Russian oil to Hungary.
It was then on 18 August that the Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó sent a post on his X account calling the military action an attack “against our energy security [that] is outrageous and unacceptable!”
Szijjártó said Russian Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin told him that Moscow was working on a solution to restore this oil supply, but that the Russian oil and ministry officials could not provide an estimate for when the service might be back online.
“For 3.5 years Brussels and Kyiv have tried to drag Hungary into the war in Ukraine. These repeated Ukrainian attacks on our energy supply serve that same purpose,” Szijjártó also vented on X.
“Let me be clear: this is not our war. We have nothing to do with it, and as long as we are in charge, Hungary will stay out of it.”
Then, in a threat of a reprisal to shut off connections from the Hungarian power grid, he wrote, “a reminder to Ukrainian decision-makers: electricity from Hungary plays a vital role in powering your country…”
The X War: Responses But No Apologies
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha replied to Szijjártó on X, saying, “Peter, it is Russia, not Ukraine, who began this war and refuses to end it. Hungary has been told for years that Moscow is an unreliable partner.”
“Despite this, Hungary has made every effort to maintain its reliance on Russia. Even after the full-scale war began. You can now send your complaints—and threats—to your friends in Moscow.”
As of this writing, some of the pipeline is reportedly back and working again. “Orban needs to learn one day he is on the wrong team and backing the wrong horse. As long as he continues to do business with Moscow he assumes these kinds of risks and the consequences are all on him,” said a Ukrainian defense official who spoke to National Security Journal.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the US Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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