Hungary will not stop purchasing Russian oil, even if asked by its ally, U.S. President Donald Trump, stated Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, citing the country's geographical limitations, being landlocked.
On Tuesday, during a meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky at the United Nations, Trump told reporters that he might use his good relations with Viktor Orban to ask the Hungarian premier to stop purchasing Russian oil. The head of Hungary's foreign policy department stated that this is not an option.
As previously reported by Bloomberg, the European Commission is reviewing trade measures aimed at importing Russian oil through the «Druzhba» pipeline, which supplies Hungary and Slovakia.
Budapest and Bratislava have so far been unwilling to diversify oil supplies from Moscow and have blocked measures that they believe threaten their energy security.
The Hungarian government preferred the import of Russian oil over an alternative pipeline through Croatia, stating that the latter's tariffs are too high and its capacity may be insufficient to fully meet the country's needs.
Slovakia, which receives oil, including from Russia, through Hungary, also stated last week that alternative sources must be created before abandoning Russian energy resources.
Meanwhile, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told reporters that as long as the EU buys energy resources from Russia, «it is financially more on the side of the aggressor than Ukraine».
«How can one understand the fact that the EU even today, 3.5 years after the start of the war, buys about 13% of its natural gas from Russia, and the amount it pays for this oil and gas exceeds all the support it provides to Ukraine?» — he told reporters in New York.