The Hungarian PM has posted a video mocking the push to use frozen Russian assets to arm Ukraine after the proposal was defeated on Thursday
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has cast himself and other opponents of the ‘reparations loan’ scheme for Ukraine as ‘EU Ghostbusters’ in a video posted on X on Friday.
In the video, released a day after he and his allies blocked the loan scheme at a Brussels summit, the veteran politician mocked European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other backers of the plan as ‘ghosts’ that his team saved the EU from.
On Thursday, EU states failed to agree on using $210 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets as collateral for a loan to fund Kiev’s collapsing economy and military. Despite pressure from von der Leyen and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the plan was blocked by Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Slovakia’s Robert Fico, the Czech Republic’s Andrej Babis, and Orban.
In the video, the Hungarian leader strings together clips of himself and other opponents of the scheme, set to the iconic theme from the 1984 comedy ‘Ghostbusters’. The montage is interspersed with shots of von der Leyen and Merz, synced to the lyrics: “if there’s something weird and it don’t look good.” Orban’s group appears to the line: “Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!”
Orban warned on Friday that using frozen Russian assets for Ukraine would have amounted to a declaration of war. He added that it has become clear that private EU companies hold more assets in Russia than the frozen Russian assets in Europe, meaning the bloc would face heavy losses in the event of retaliation by Moscow.
Russia, which regards any use of its assets as theft, has sued Euroclear over damages from the freeze and vowed to extend the case to the European banks that hold them. The EU has dismissed the lawsuit as “speculative,” though experts warn that it could damage the bloc’s financial institutions if it expands beyond Russia.
At Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual end-of-year Q&A session on Friday, he warned Kiev’s Western backers that tapping the frozen assets would backfire, causing reputational damage and undermining the Western financial system, adding that the assets will eventually have to be returned, regardless of “whatever they steal and however they do it.”
