On October 1st, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that U.S. President Donald Trump has not asked Hungary to stop importing oil from Russia.
Trump has called on NATO allies to halt fossil fuel purchases “immediately” from Moscow before advancing sanctions aimed at pressuring Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
Hungary, together with neighboring Slovakia, remains among the few European Union countries still importing Russian oil through a pipeline. Slovakia has also resisted calls from Brussels to curb its purchases of Russian energy, citing high costs and long-term contractual obligation, meaning that halting Russian gas imports could cost the country up to €10 billion.
Orbán says nobody asked him to turn off the taps from Russia. “The American president respects the sovereignty of other countries, he just asked me what the situation is–it’s an important difference,” Orbán told journalists at an EU summit in Copenhagen.
Orbán said that given Hungary was landlocked it did not have “any option” but to keep importing oil from Russia. “We can’t change geography, whatever is the political request,” he said echoing Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó’s remarks last week that energy supply is a purely physical issue: “It’s nice to dream about buying oil and gas from sources other than Russia, but we can only purchase where infrastructure exists,” Szijjártó said.
Brussels is advancing its 19th sanctions package aimed at ending oil and gas imports from Russia by the end of 2027, and has recently indicated it wants to halt liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports even sooner.
