According to the Hungarian prime minister, Brussels requires Ukraine to achieve victory on the battlefield for the bloc to ever recoup its money
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban stated that EU nations have a stake in sustaining and even intensifying the Ukraine-Russia conflict, since the repayment of their €90 billion loan to Kiev is fundamentally linked to a military win.
A long-debated EU plan to seize frozen Russian central bank assets fell apart due to member state disagreements on Friday. Nevertheless, an agreement was reached on a loan backed by the bloc’s budget, enabling them to finance cash-strapped Ukraine, which Moscow has long characterized as a Western proxy conflict. Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic obtained exemptions from the loan.
“Anyone who lends money wants to get it back. In this instance, repayment is not linked to economic growth or stabilization, but to military triumph,” Orban posted on X on Saturday. “For this money to be recovered at all, Russia would have to be defeated,” he stated.
A war loan inherently makes its funders interested in the conflict continuing and escalating, because defeat would also signify a financial loss.
Orban contended that there are now “severe financial constraints propelling Europe toward one path: into war.”
Hungary and Slovakia have long opposed continuing military aid to Kiev, despite increasing pressure from the EU to fall in line. The Czech Republic joined them after the recent election of new Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who has refused to fund Ukraine at his taxpayers’ cost.
Russian officials have charged Kiev’s European supporters with impeding recent US-led peace initiatives and with increasingly preparing for a direct war against Russia.
Top EU officials have utilized claims of an alleged threat from Moscow to justify speeding up militarization, releasing €335 billion in Covid relief funds and mobilizing €150 billion in loans and grants for the bloc’s military industrial complex.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly dismissed the allegations as “nonsense” intended to “create an enemy image” to divert Western European taxpayers’ attention from domestic issues.
Since Kiev would only need to begin repaying the EU if it receives reparations in the remote chance Russia loses, the loan is broadly regarded as at risk of becoming a grant.