Hungarian denies U.S. on list as adversary, defends energy deals with Russia

A top adviser to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban denounced a reported U.S. intelligence document that said Mr. Orban recently listed the United States as one of the top adversaries of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party.

“Prime Minister Orban never said this thing. This is fake news,” said Balazs Orban, the Hungarian leader’s political director. The disclosure made headlines last week as media outlets worked through a trove of alleged U.S. intelligence documents leaked on social media, reportedly by a young National Guard airman from Massachusetts.

In a wide-ranging interview this week with The Washington Times, Balazs Orban, who is not related to the prime minister, rejected criticisms of natural gas supply deals that Hungary has signed with Russia while the Kremlin presses its nearly 15-month-old invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s top economic adviser, Oleg Ustenko, said the Orban government was underwriting the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.

Last week, shortly after a video circulating online purported to show Russian soldiers carrying out the grisly execution of a Ukrainian soldier, Mr. Ustenko told Politico: “If you’ve seen the video where Russians cut the head off a Ukrainian soldier — the Hungarians are paying for the knife. You have to be completely blind not to see what kinds of crimes you are sponsoring. Buying more gas from the Russians means you are giving them more capacity to escalate the war.”

Balazs Orban said the comments “cannot be taken seriously.” He noted that Hungary has welcomed many Ukrainian war refugees despite its energy relationship with the Kremlin. Fellow members of the European Union have sharply criticized that relationship.

“[This] is not how you talk about the international arena, about the country, which is actually hosting hundreds and hundreds of thousands of your own citizens as refugees and actually, through the European Union, [is] supporting the entire operation of the Ukrainian state, not from a military point of view but a civilian point of view,” the adviser said.

The rift underscores wider European tensions over the Ukraine war and the Hungarian prime minister’s precarious position. Mr. Orban is a staunchly conservative Eastern European leader and is widely considered to have the closest relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin of any EU or NATO leader.

Hungary gets about 65% of its oil and 85% of its gas from Russia. In 2021, Budapest signed a 15-year agreement with Russian state energy giant Gazprom to purchase natural gas. The deal was questioned last year after Moscow invaded Ukraine and the EU and the Biden administration sought to sanction Russian energy exports to shut down revenue for the war effort.

The Orban government initially rejected the sanctions but ultimately accepted them after negotiating a deal with the EU to allow oil imports to be delivered temporarily via the Russian Druzhba pipeline to Hungary and other landlocked EU countries. Budapest complained that the compromise failed to prevent an “energy emergency” of disruptions and skyrocketing prices across Europe.
 
Ukrainian officials are now calling on the European Union to intervene and find ways to block Hungary’s purchases of Russian energy. Some commentators say Brussels must approve any new Hungarian-Russian energy deals, including one signed this month by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto during a visit to Moscow.

Asked whether the Russian deal needs EU approval, Balazs Orban said, “No. This is about the energy security of Hungary.”

He added: “Politically, we are under heavy pressure. So if you’re following the articles and the politicians who are talking about that, they are obviously putting pressure on us to stop energy cooperation with Russia. But unfortunately, in this reality we have right now, it’s impossible to do it in the short term.”

Friction with Washington

Hungary’s sticky relationship with the European Union was showing long before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Many on the U.S. and European left have criticized the Hungarian prime minister since his nationalist, right-leaning Fidesz party swept to power more than a decade ago. Mr. Orban’s critics accuse him of increasingly authoritarian rule and say his self-described “illiberal democracy” has resulted in the silencing of dissenting voices and the promotion of policies that hurt the marginalized.

Many American conservatives see Mr. Orban as a champion of traditional values, an ally of former President Donald Trump and a bulwark resisting the globalist ideology and bureaucratic overreach of left-leaning EU leaders in Brussels. The Conservative Political Action Committee held its annual meeting in Hungary last year and is scheduled for another session in Budapest next month.

Balazs Orban said Hungary and the United States are “old friends and old allies,” but he acknowledged that it is not easy right now to be an ally of the United States.

“In Hungary, we have a very successful, clear-cut, conservative right-wing Christian government, which is operating quite well,” he said. “Obviously, on a political level, we can work together in a much easier way with the Republicans.”

Friction between the Biden administration and the Orban government surfaced earlier this year when the openly gay ambassador whom President Biden sent to Hungary faced a firestorm of criticism in Budapest. Pro-government media accused the diplomat of violating protocols, meddling in the judiciary and undermining the country’s traditional values.

Ambassador David Pressman, a human rights lawyer who has headed the U.S. Embassy in Hungary since September, said the accusations were baseless and media controlled by the Orban government were attacking him personally.

A profile on Mr. Pressman published by The New York Times in February pointed specifically to PestiSracok, a pro-Orban news portal that has denounced the appointment of the U.S. ambassador as “an expert on LGBT rights” and “an obvious diplomatic provocation.”

Balazs Orban said Hungary has an open “political debate with the U.S. Embassy and with the current U.S. administration.”

He expressed frustration that the Biden administration is not calling for a cease-fire in Ukraine but instead is promoting continued support for Ukraine’s military as it presses to reclaim territory on the battlefield.

“This war is something that should be discussed in the United States in a different way,” he said. “We are always talking about the importance of peace and not the importance of continuation of the war.”

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that a CIA assessment leaked online said the Hungarian prime minister had identified the United States as a top adversary during a private Fidesz party strategy meeting.

Balazs Orban dismissed the revelation as “fake news,” reflecting concern in Washington that the leaks of classified documents had been manipulated through a foreign adversary’s disinformation and influence operation.

The FBI last week arrested a 21-year-old National Guard airman in connection with the leaks, but some intelligence sources say Russia might have manipulated some of the documents.

Pressed on whether he believed the alleged spy document relating to Mr. Orban was a fake or was somehow engineered or manipulated by an adversarial foreign actor such as Russia, the adviser responded, “I have no idea.”

“We are a small country in the middle of Central Europe, so I’m pretty sure that all the big guys and big elephants in the room are present,” he said. “I don’t really understand what is going on. I was there personally, and I know that it’s fake because [Prime Minister Orban] didn’t say that. He was talking about the obvious, you know, disagreement between the United States and Hungary, but this is something very different.”