Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has told the Swiss daily Weltwoche that President Vladimir Putin told him that his concern was with the American missile bases in Poland and Romania, and a possible NATO expansion in Ukraine and Georgia to station weapons there. “The Americans also withdrew from important disarmament agreements,” PM Orbán said. “I understand what Putin said. I do not accept what he did,” he added.
According to MTI, PM Orbán said European political norms did not work in Russia, and Europe had to find a way to live together with a “large, dangerous power in our neighborhood.” On the possibility of Russia losing the war, PM Orbán said: “Russia is a nuclear power. It would be a geopolitical shock, a global, potentially disastrous earthquake, much worse than the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. The fact that the West takes that scenario so lightly shows a frightening blindness towards the risks inherent in our policies,” he said. Meanwhile, PM Orbán said that Europe should be able to defend itself. “The solution would be a European NATO,” he said. While the West is lacking the will to broker peace, China, India, the Arab countries, Turkey and Brazil want just that, PM Orbán said. “The West has lost its ability to unite the world behind a cause.”
Hungary is “showing an alternative should our friends and allies decide to give up their pro-war stance,” he said. On US politics, PM Orbán insisted the war could have been avoided had former President Donald Trump — “a hope for peace … who could probably broker peace within weeks” — remained in power. The Democrat leadership does not recognise Hungary as “a successful country and the protector of the defences on the edge of the continent. So we are looking forward to our Republican friends gaining power again.” PM Orbán said the “global realignment preached by the apostles of the Davos World Economic Forum” was very dangerous for Hungary, “an export-oriented country with important cultural and economic ties with the East.”