BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Fears that Russia will mount an attack on any NATO member are unfounded, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday, adding that the war in Ukraine, which is now in its third year, showed the limits of Russia’s capabilities.
Hungary, a member of the European Union and NATO, has refused to provide military assistance to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion of Russia in February 2022. Budapest is also seeking to exclude itself from NATO’s long-term plan to help Ukraine Ukraine, with its foreign minister calling it a “crazy mission”.
Nationalist Orban, in power since 2010, has based his campaign for next month’s European Parliament elections on an agenda of avoiding deeper involvement in the conflict, saying the vote could determine the course of war and peace in Europe. .
“The Russian military is fighting a serious and difficult war with the Ukrainians,” Orban said in an interview with public radio. “If the Russians were strong enough to defeat the Ukrainians in one fell swoop, they would have done so already.”
Orban said NATO’s military capabilities far exceed Ukraine’s, so it is unlikely that Russia or any other country would mount an attack against NATO.
“I do not consider it logical that Russia, which cannot even defeat Ukraine, suddenly comes and swallows the entire Western world,” Orbán said. “The chances of that happening are extremely small.”
Orban said he viewed references to the Russian threat as a prelude to deeper Western involvement in the Ukraine war.
Relations between Budapest and Washington have soured due to Hungary’s slowness in ratifying Sweden’s membership of NATO and also due to Orbán’s warm ties with Moscow despite the war in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Gergely Szakacs; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)
