Why is Hungarys Viktor Orban cozying up to both Putin and Trump?

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has long been a headache for European leaders who try to take a hard line on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.Orban, a long-time Putin ally, has repeatedly called on the European Union to halt its military funding to Kyiv and reject any effort to allow Ukraine to join NATO, much to Moscow’s delight.The premier, who has transformed Hungary into an electoral autocracy where he rules with very few checks on his power, is now renewing his efforts to cozy up to President Trump — with the American leader’s talking points in the peace talks echoing many of Orban’s own positions.His position has given the former Warsaw Pact nation — which has a population only slightly larger than New Jersey — an outsized role in European diplomacy.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has gone as far as to claim that Orban, who Trump has repeatedly tapped as one of his key allies in the region, is the mastermind feeding Trump misinformation and steering him away from Kyiv and the rest of Europe.“I know that there are people from this Hungarian leader who have contact with people in President Trump’s orbit, and are constantly raising questions… in regards to not expanding NATO into eastern Europe,” Zelensky said during a conference last Sunday.Orban, who has served as prime minister since 2010, bucked the rest of the EU when he met with Putin in 2023 to reaffirm their commitment to bilateral ties despite the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Hungary, which has population of 9.7 million, enjoys strong economic ties and industrial contracts with Russia, much of which relates to the energy industry and bypasses the EU’s decision to place sanctions on Moscow over the Russian army’s invasion in 2022.Putin has also remained a strong diplomatic ally for Obran amid the Hungarian leader’s repeated clashes with Europe over his restrictions on the LGBT community, migrants and academic and press freedoms.In 2024, the EU bl...