Prime Minister Orbán explains his refusal to back the EU statement.Continue reading
Russia won the war in Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview posted on the Patrióta YouTube channel on Tuesday, in which he also said that Europe could have kept its future in its own hands if it had negotiated with the Russians, but now the Russians will negotiate with the Americans on a number of issues, including the future of Europe.
In a conversation with security policy expert György Nógrádi, the prime minister assessed that people are talking about the Russian-Ukrainian war as if it were an open-ended war situation, but it is not. “The Ukrainians have lost the war. Russia has won this war,” he said, adding that the only question is when and under what circumstances the West, which supports the Ukrainians, will acknowledge that this has happened and what will follow from it.
He emphasized that the Ukrainians are in a very difficult situation, especially the Ukrainian president, who is not even in control of his own affairs, as Ukraine is only not capitulating because the Europeans and, to a lesser extent, the Americans are supplying it with weapons and money. He recalled that the Hungarian government has always said that Europe, European institutions, or the French and Germans should negotiate with the Russians.
“Europe could have kept its future in its own hands if we Europeans had negotiated with the Russians about the future of Europe, but now the Russians are negotiating with the Americans on a number of issues, including the future of Europe, but we are not negotiating, he said in connection with Friday’s Russian-American summit.”
If you are not at the negotiating table, you are on the menu,” he remarked.
When asked about the US president quoting the Hungarian prime minister’s opinion in a statement, Viktor Orbán responded that it is not worth exaggerating one’s own importance, because that “will cause big trouble.” Instead, it is worth seeing this as a reflection of the fact that in politics, it is the number of years spent in office that gives one authority. He pointed out that since he has been in office the longest in Europe, it “seems quite obvious” that if someone is curious about something, they would ask the Hungarian prime minister first.
In his assessment, this statement is not really about him, but about the stability of the country, as Hungary has had the same political leadership for a long time, which is a “fantastic advantage” in diplomacy.
The prime minister also spoke about why he vetoed the European Council’s statement on the Russian-American meeting. He emphasized that the statement contained a sentence about Ukraine’s membership in the European Union, even though the Hungarian people had already decided that “Ukraine will not become a member of the European Union,” so he would not sign any declarations to the contrary, he said.
He added that Europe must be respectable, not weak and pathetic. “If two people sit down and do not invite you, you do not rush to the phone, you do not run around, you do not shout from outside, you do not want to emphasize your own importance,” said the prime minister, who believes that such behavior is pathetic.
A Europe that commands respect sits at the table, not in the hallway, when the big decisions shaping our future are made. Brussels has forgotten that to prosper, Europe must reclaim its ambition and strength.
Make Europe Great Again! #MEGA pic.twitter.com/UUwpL82Omf
— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) August 12, 2025
He assessed that Europe currently has no chance of success because European leaders have lost their “desire for greatness.”
Europe does not want to be great, it just wants to live well, but if you want to live well, you have to be great and strong,”
he noted, adding that this connection is not yet considered obvious in Brussels.
The prime minister pointed out that, in addition to the war, the Trump-Putin meeting will also discuss major issues in the global economy. The question, he continued, is whether the global economy will become unified in the wake of the conflicts, whether a new system of cooperation based on a new balance will emerge, or whether it will split in two and begin to form blocs. This will also have a major impact on Hungary’s economic development, he added.
The world is not very tolerant of the fact that, instead of helping with conflicts in other parts of the world, the Americans and Europeans have become embroiled in the Russian-Ukrainian war, pushing all other global problems into the background. President Trump is breaking out of this and trying to resolve the open issues one by one, he noted. The Russian-Ukrainian war is important, but there will also be other issues on the negotiating table that are just as important, if not more so, Viktor Orbán emphasized.
The prime minister pointed out that the global energy trade situation needs to be clarified. One question is what will happen with the sanctions, whether one or two players will continue to be excluded from global energy management, leading to “backdoor” solutions such as Russian oil shipments to India, which will trigger new sanctions. The other option is to abandon the sanctions policy in one or two steps and reach agreement on the most important issues, he said.
Hungary’s fate depends on questions such as “how much energy we can buy on the world market and at what price,” said the prime minister.
The prime minister pointed out that world politics and the global economy are based on a balance of power, and if one of the key players changes any of its essential elements, the other will react. This is what happened in the Russian-Ukrainian war: the Ukrainians announced that they would transition from their previous role as a buffer zone to that of a Western ally. The Russians responded by saying that they did not want to have a neighbor along a very long border that was part of the Western alliance system, had Western weapons, maintained a large army, and would eventually join NATO. The Russians indicated that they were prepared to take steps to prevent this from happening, the prime minister said.
Via MTI; Featured Image: MTI/Miniszterelnöki Kommunikációs Fõosztály/Fischer Zoltán