Most Friday mornings, Hungary’s Prime Minister gives an interview on one of the public radio stations. Since the independent media has not had a chance to interview him for several years, these weekly radio interviews provide a rare opportunity for finding out what the leader of the country thinks about current events, how he sees his opponents and any issues at hand.
Two days before the local and EP elections, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave another interview to the public broadcaster Kossuth Rádió.
Commenting on the war between Russia and Ukraine on Friday morning, the Prime Minister said: “In the history of all wars, there has always been a point which was the last possibility of turning back, and I think we are very close to it.”
Orbán said that we now only "need to survive" the summer and the first half of autumn without an escalation, and then hope that Donald Trump wins the US presidential election in November. According to Orbán, if that happens, a "transatlantic peace coalition" could be created, which he believes would be the fastest road to peace.
"We are centimetres from reaching the point of no return," he said.
The Prime Minister said that every day there was less and less hope that this war could be stopped. "But this weekend we will be given a chance. And then comes the US election," he added.
Orbán spoke at length about how he believes the Russia-Ukraine war is escalating into an increasingly open conflict between the West and the East. "The French president has said that the planes will be handed over – that's a fact. The Russians saying that from now on they will provide America's enemies with weapons all over the world is not just an announcement, it's a fact. It's not propaganda.
According to Orbán, "only the blind cannot see" that Europe is in a state of war psychosis. He believes that the logical outcome of this will be the arrival of military units from Western European countries on Ukrainian territory. "In the best case scenario, they won't go to the front line, but there can be no doubt in anyone's mind that this will happen," he said.
The EU's outrageous decision on Russian broadcasts
"Russia is not a third-rate, run-of-the-mill country, even though their economy and technological standards in the civilian field may be behind those of China and the US, although this is not even true in all areas. But one can venture to say that their military-engineering technology in partiuclar, as well as their military industry, their raw material resources, and the hinterland necessary for fighting a war, are the biggest in the world," he said.
He added that he finds it outrageous that Russian state news broadcasts have been banned in the European Union, so they cannot reach the Hungarian people and the rest of the EU.
"Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot, live coverage of the peace march on the Internet was suspended or removed, our anti-war posters have been vandalised, so they are trying to silence the pro-peace forces.
The European Union has taken a decision, a decision that I believe to be without any legal basis, it's an outrageous decision according to which EU member states are not even allowed to receive Russian broadcasts. The Hungarian people and the citizens of the other member states are being denied the opportunity to watch the Ukrainian news and the Russian news and to then decide where they think the truth lies. This is forbidden," the Prime Minister said.
Staying out of NATO's “Ukrainian mission”
"What I see is that we have learned how to withstand pressure from Brussels, Hungary knows how to defend its independence. NATO is a more difficult matter, the NATO Secretary General will be coming here too. As I see it, we must definitely stay out of what NATO is calling "the Ukrainian mission", Orbán said, stressing that Hungary has the right to stick to NATO's basic principle which states that it is a defence alliance.
"Even if we so much as dip our pinky into it, even in the planning phase, we will be sucked in," he added.
According to Orbán, when NATO really launches its military mission in Ukraine, the control over the Hungarian military units offered to NATO will be transferred from national competence to the commander of NATO. "If this happens, we will have lost a very important part of our sovereignty, or rather we will have ceded an important part of our sovereignty, and from then on we will not be able to keep Hungarian troops out of the war.
The point at which we have to do this, to withdraw from any NATO activity related to preparing for involvement in Ukraine, is very close. We still have to discuss this with the current Secretary General and the future Secretary General," he said.
Viktor Orbán avoids critical questions at home. It’s been years since he gave an interview to independent media. However, for several years, most Friday mornings he has been a regular guest on state-owned Kossuth Rádió, where he is interviewed by a lead editor of the public broadcasting service (operating from an annual budget of 320 million euros). Katalin Nagy has been almost exclusively the one allowed to interview Orbán on the state-owned channel throughout his third and fourth term with a two-thirds majority in parliament. She has received the state decoration of the Cross of the Order of Merit of Hungary and doesn’t shy away from asking questions.