“It is always a great honor for me to meet you personally.”
That quotation comes from Viktor Orban, speaking to Vladimir Putin, according to a Kremlin readout of their meeting.
Visiting Moscow, the Hungarian prime minister offered his tacit support to Putin on Tuesday.
Most leaders of NATO member states are using their engagements with Putin to pressure the Russian leader to reduce his military buildup around Ukraine’s borders. Not so Orban. As Russia threatens an imminent invasion of Ukraine, one that might well shred that nation’s existence as a democratic entity, Orban’s focus was Putin’s friendship. At a press conference following their bilateral meeting, Orban was asked for his thoughts on the Ukraine crisis.
The supposed strongman responded with ludicrous ambiguity. “The situation,” he said, “is complicated.”
This was music to Putin’s ears. Putin railed against the United States and NATO, complaining that Russia had been “swindled” and that its “fundamental concerns were ignored.” Orban helpfully advanced Putin’s grievance narrative. He lamented Western sanctions on Russia as not “acceptable” and “destined for failure.” Some of these sanctions bear direct relevance to the current crisis over Ukraine, imposed as they were following Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and areas of southeastern Ukraine. Orban’s rhetoric doesn’t exactly lend credibility to President Joe Biden’s pledge that any reinvasion of Ukraine will result in coordinated U.S. and European sanctions on Moscow.
To be sure, other European powers adopt a similarly weak posture toward Putin. But what sets Orban apart is his willingness to go above and beyond. Not only does he fail to resist Russian aggression, but he actually bolsters the rationale for it. For Orban, the NATO ideal of democratic sovereignty for nations in Europe — nations just like his own — is just a tedious annoyance.
And Orban’s energy policy, like Germany’s, is to buy gas from Russia through pipelines not transiting Ukraine. That will mean Ukraine’s loss of billions of dollars in annual transit fees and an easier path for Putin to divide the alliance by harming Ukraine without affecting the natural gas deliveries to destinations farther West.
Where it matters most, at the intersection of allied action and adversarial threat, Orban is a useful friend to Russia (and to China, where he will travel to meet Xi Jinping later this week).
Perhaps he’s even a puppet. Concluding his answer to a question on Tuesday, Putin hurried off the stage and beckoned a surprised Orban to hustle after him. It was pure Putin theater: a sign to all those watching that there was only one strongman in Moscow.
