We could go on at length about why President Zelensky would want to blow up a vital pipeline and punish a sovereign country like Hungary for its energy policy, but we will turn a blind eye to that. We must, however, firmly bring to the attention of the Ukrainian head of state that the purchase of Russian oil is not a value choice for Hungary, but a necessity.
We Hungarians do not buy oil from Russia because we want to, but because our pipelines were built in this direction during 40 years of communist dictatorship, and the refinery in Százhalombatta can only process this oil at present.
Converting it to a different type of oil and building new pipelines — whether Zelensky believes it or not —will take years, so for the time being, our country has no other option but to source oil from the East, from Russia.
Otherwise, even if this were not the case, Ukraine and President Zelensky have no say in who Hungary buys from or what Hungary buys — just as we have no say in what Ukraine does in this respect.
Budapest is baffled by Ukraine’s supposed plan to blow up vital oil pipelines supporting Hungary’s industrial sector. Hungary is supporting Ukrainians fleeing the war in the largest humanitarian aid operation in its history, and it has helped hundreds of thousands of people who have stayed in Hungary or have passed through as refugees.
So, apart from arms, Hungary is giving all the help it can to its eastern neighbor.
In fact, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in a recent radio interview, it is in Hungary’s interest that Ukraine should be a successful country. And this should be true the other way around: Ukraine can only expect help from its western neighbor, from us, if Hungary can help because it has the means. That is why it is so wrong that Zelensky would take irrational revenge by destroying Hungarian industry — and it is not clear why he would even propose this.
There is, of course, an aspect of the case that Ukraine, which is preparing to join NATO, was planning an attack on the critical infrastructure of a NATO member state. In light of this, it would be worth asking NATO headquarters in Brussels just how reliable an ally Ukraine and its current leadership really are.
This was not the only crazy thing Zelensky fantasized about in the leaked documents. He allegedly was going to raid Russian villages to further escalate the war; he was also going to ask for more Western weapons with even greater ranges earlier.
Let there be no doubt. The documents that have come to light have not only caused a fuse to blow in Hungary. Now, more and more people are asking the question: Is peace possible with a Ukrainian president who cannot really be taken at his word?
