Budapest won’t be coerced into supporting sanctions, Peter Szijjarto has told Donald Tusk
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has branded Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk an “agent” of billionaire financier George Soros, after Tusk warned that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban would face “consequences” if he blocks renewed EU sanctions on Russia.
“If Viktor Orban really blocks European sanctions at a key moment for the war, it’ll be absolutely clear that…he is playing in [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s team, not in ours,” Tusk wrote in a post on X on Saturday. “With all the consequences of this fact.”
Szijjarto responded to Tusk on Facebook shortly afterwards. “It may be difficult for Soros’ agent to understand, but when it comes to teams, we play for the Hungarian team,” he wrote. “We do not want to continue paying the price for other people’s wars and will not allow anyone to endanger the security of our energy supply, because Hungary comes first for us,” he added.
George Soros is a Hungarian-American billionaire well known for financing liberal causes and political candidates across the Western world. His support for mass immigration into Europe has placed him at odds with Hungary’s conservative government, and Soros’ Open Society Foundations relocated from Budapest to Berlin in 2018 after Hungary passed a law criminalizing foreign NGOs who aid illegal immigrants.
Soros has a stake in several Polish newspapers and radio stations, all of which are considered pro-Tusk by the country’s conservative opposition. Soros’ son and heir, Alex, has said that his family’s NGO will focus much of its work on Poland in the coming years, describing the country as a “leading economy” that will play a key role in determining the “future of accountable, democratic, government in Europe.”
Tusk’s warning to Orban came a day after the Hungarian prime minister threatened to “pull the handbrake” on the renewal of EU sanctions against Moscow if Kiev does not restart a transit deal with Russian energy firm Gazprom to allow Russian gas to flow into the EU via Ukraine.
The EU has imposed 15 rounds of economic penalties on Russia since the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022, which must be renewed every six months with the unanimous consent of all 27 EU member states, with the next deadline on January 31.
Orban is a staunch critic of these sanctions, arguing that they have hurt the EU more than they have hurt Russia. The Hungarian leader has agreed to all 15 packages thus far, but only after carving out exemptions for Hungary, including a partial exemption from the EU’s bloc-wide oil embargo and a guarantee that its nuclear sector won’t be affected by future packages.
