Gergely Varga
The recent last-minute conditional support by Hungary for extending EU sanctions against Russia was just the latest example of a long history of disputes between Brussels and Budapest about policy towards Moscow. Ever since Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán came to power in 2010, much of Europe has been accusing his subsequent governments of cosying up to Moscow. Some critics trace the Hungarian leader’s supposedly friendly approach to Russia to a 15-minute-long meeting between Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán in St. Petersburg in November 2009.
For many of Orbán’s opponents, the meeting still holds an almost mystical significance, as if the previously staunchly anti-Russian Hungarian political leader had suddenly and inexplicably undergone a Pauline conversion. On the contrary, the change in the Hungarian right-wing leader’s foreign policy perspective was not the result of a fifteen-minute conversation with Putin, but of international developments over the previous fifteen months. The roots of the change in Orbán’s outlook should be sought not in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but in the capitals of Hungary’s Western allies.
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