Orbán: The world is on the threshold of a much bigger change than many people think

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that there's an offer initiated by Hungary on the table, with the goal of ensuring that no one dies in the Russian-Ukrainian war, at least at Christmas. “One side rejected it, the other side accepted it.”

In his usual Friday morning interview on public broadcaster Kossuth Rádió, the PM said that Hungarian diplomacy had recently gone above and beyond, and had done everything it could. “The Olympics could have also served as an opportunity to – in line with a European civilisational tradition – interrupt the war for at least a few days, but it did not happen. Christmas is approaching now, so it was worth making an attempt, and that's what Hungary did.

I think Hungary has acted the way one would expect a thousand-year-old European state to act,"

Orbán said, adding that he believed that the world is on the threshold of a much bigger change than many people think. As soon as the new US president takes office, there will be a huge shift in the world, which will be clear to everyone in the days after 20 January, Orbán said.

"I've just spoken to the Americans, I've spoken with the Russians, I've spoken with the Europeans, I've spoken with the Turks, and I can say with certainty that once the next US president takes office, the world will undergo a huge turnaround. Right now we are still in a dangerous season, because America does have a new President, but he will not take office until 20 January. The German government has failed, the French government has fallen apart, and Syria, which has been the biggest emitter of migrants in the past decade, is in turmoil, and the government there has also collapsed," he said.

"As soon as the next American president takes office, this turnaround that I'm talking about is going to happen across the Western world, it's going to unfold right before our eyes.

And we won't have to wait long for that, just a day or two after the 20th, because as I see it, the new American administration will hit the ground running," the Hungarian Prime Minister added.

A “sunny afternoon” in the turbulent Romanian-Hungarian relationship

With regard to the Schengen accession of Romania and Bulgaria, the Prime Minister said that the Hungarian EU Presidency had done a lot for the two countries' Schengen membership. He said "in the history of the turbulent Romanian-Hungarian relations, this is a sunny afternoon". "It was a time when the Hungarians were able to do something good, of which the Romanians are also beneficiaries, and the Romanians know this and have been constructive by the way, and have helped. And let's not forget the Bulgarians, with whom we have never had any problems, they are a friendly people, we can only say the best about them based on our memories of history, and we are glad that we were able to help them out," he said.

Orbán also said that Romania's membership in Schengen would also be a great relief for the Hungarian police, as they would no longer have to send so many police officers to the Hungarian-Romanian border. "So we will save an awful lot of manpower and energy. The police have staffing problems anyway," he said.

Someone wanted to make Hungary a target

Orbán also touched on the fake news of last Sunday, according to which the plane of the ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad might have arrived in Budapest, a report that later turned out to be untrue. In Orbán's assessment, "someone" wanted to involve Hungary in the "scalding hot" Syrian conflict.

"What happened was that somebody wanted to use a fake news story to get Hungary involved in a scalding hot conflict, which means that they wanted to make Hungary a target.

Because right now, President Assad is being hunted. He has fled the country, so he is being hunted. Armed groups, semi-terrorist organizations and terrorist groups are all after him. Anyone who claims that President Assad has entered Hungary has made, or wanted to make Hungary a hunting ground. We need to know who they are and why they did what they did. It is up to the national security services to find that out. This is not something to be toyed with, this is a matter of the security of the Hungarian people," he said.

He continued by asking: Did this happen by accident? Well, I've seen a lot of things in the world, and I don't believe that something like this happens by accident. Who is behind this? Who came up with this? For what purpose? Who was involved from Hungary?

A fantastic year ahead for Hungary

The Prime Minister also spoke about the year ahead, reiterating his previously stated view that 2025 will be a fantastic year. The government expects economic growth to be above 3 percent. "We are going to come out of this war-affected situation, we can now see the end of the tunnel, and everyone can finally feel that there is a purpose to their work," he said. He added that it is always difficult to reason with the credit rating agencies "but even our harshest critics do not rule out that economic growth can happen".

Orbán announced that huge economic capacities are going to be launched next year, with the BMW and BYD factories set to start operations in the country, and several battery factories are also going to start production.

Over the past week, the Hungarian Prime Minister has been on another "peace mission", meeting Donald Trump on Monday, talking to Vladimir Putin by phone on Wednesday and paying a quick visit to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday. Meanwhile, Hungarian diplomacy tried to arrange a Christmas ceasefire and prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine, which ultimately served as a pretext for another round of confrontation between the Hungarian and Ukrainian governments.