Hungary’s PM Orbán is challenging Western democracies

That is also the position of some other Eastern European countries, like Slovakia as well as Austria and Germany in Western Europe.

Hungary and Slovakia have now broken with Germany and Austria and they will pay in roubles for their gas from Russia. In spite of tightening sanctions against Russia, oil, gas and coal supplies are exempted from boycott in Europe.

This is the EU's position despite pressure from some EU members to totally boycott all trade with Russia. For example, the three Baltic states are the first NATO and EU countries now to shut down all gas import from Russia.

Orbán explained that although he personally does not believe in sanctions as they also hurt Hungary, the rest of Europe and the world, Hungary supports the EU's decision to impose severe sanctions on Russia to maintain consensus.

But together with some other EU members, like Germany and Slovakia, Hungary vetoed stopping the flow of gas and oil from Russia to all European nations. Had this not happened, he argued, the Hungarian economy would have been brought to a standstill and destroyed.

However, NATO did vote for arming Ukraine during its war with the Russians.

And although Orbán acknowledges that the Russians are the aggressors and he sides with NATO, he refuses to send armaments to Ukraine. Nor does he allow the flow of armaments from other NATO countries to go through Hungary to the Ukrainian border.

He says he has two hundred thousand reasons for this; which is the number of Hungarians living on the Ukrainian side, bordering on Hungary. He says that allowing weapons to enter Ukraine through the Hungarian-Ukrainian border where they live, would make them a target of the Russian missiles.

Hence Orbán's stoush with Zelenskyy is ongoing, as the latter sees Orbán's position both on weapons and energy boycotts disadvantaging Ukraine in its armed resistance to the Russian invasion.

However, Hungary, on per capita basis is the largest recipient of Ukrainian refugees in Europe, and unlike with non-European refugees before, it opened its borders to all refugees from Ukraine. The Hungarians have been accepting them with open arms.

Following his election victory, Orbán says that Putin phoned to congratulate him. In a long conversation, Orbán claims that he asked Putin to get together with Zelenskyy and the French and German leaders in Budapest to bring about a cease fire now before any detailed peace terms negotiations.

He said that Putin was 'positive' about his suggestion, however, Putin said that Ukraine first needed to agree to certain pre-conditions. (In other words, Putin is continuing to stall).