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Orban on Ukraine: “We don't know where its borders are"
“My colleagues who disagree with me are attacking me from all sides Both the committee officials, and the opposition at home. It will be a tough day, but we will fight through it,” Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán said in Copenhagen ahead of the EU summit.
When asked whether Ukraine's accession procedure could be initiated without him, he said that legal tricks would not work, as all accession procedures had been conducted under the same legal framework.
He congratulated the winner of the Moldovan election, but said that their accession to the EU could not be linked to the case of Ukraine. “We don't know where its borders are, we don't know how many people live there, and it cannot stand on its own two feet. If we decided not to support them, Ukraine would cease to exist as a state,” Orban said. He also added that it is not his political position that Hungary does not support Ukraine's membership, but the decision of the Hungarian people. “This is not a matter of negotiation: the Hungarian people do not want either military or economic integration with Ukraine.
Regarding the drone wall coalition, he said that he supports all military cooperation.“If something flies into Hungary and does not belong to us, we will shoot it down. Whether there is a drone wall or not,”he said
Alarming rise in Hungary’s public debt outpaces economy
The statistical office published data series revealing the main trends in the Hungarian economy in its updated Stadat database. The data includes new GDP data for 2024, and some indicators for previous years have also been updated.
Let's start with the most important figure: according to data released by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, the gross domestic product at current prices was HUF 81,447.66 billion last year. Although the GDP is significantly higher than in 2023, by 8.2 percent, a significant portion of this (7.6 percent) was due to the effect of the implicit price index, while actual economic growth was only 0.6 percent.
Nominal GDP has risen significantly over the past five years, but during this period, it was only once caused by actual economic growth rather than inflation (in 2021, actual economic growth was 7.2 percent after the collapse caused by COVID-19 in 2020, and the impact of the price index was only 6.2 percent). In the previous six years, from 2014 to 2019, the impact of actual economic growth was greater than that of inflation.
Hungary blocks 13 Ukrainian outlets after Kyiv ban
Hungary will block access to several Ukrainian news outlets after Kyiv restricted Hungarian media last month, the minister for the prime minister’s office has announced. Gergely Gulyás said on Facebook that the decision was taken “following the principle of reciprocity”, after Ukraine banned a number of foreign publications in mid-September including pro-government outlets such as Origo and Demokrata – accusing them of spreading Russian propaganda.
Gulyás claimed Ukraine’s move was provoked by criticism of sanctions against Moscow and of western military aid, as well as coverage depicting the EU and Nato as divided rather than unified. The Hungarian government has now blocked access to 13 Ukrainian websites, including Ukrainska Pravda, Hromadske and NV. “I don’t think many people read the Ukrainian Pravda or even desire to. However, a sovereign country must respond proportionately to a completely unjustified attack,” he wrote. The minister’s announcement comes against the backdrop of earlier tit-for-tat restrictions: Russia introduced similar measures last year, when the EU blocked access to three Russian outlets.
Putin urges Hungarians to support Orbán “if they want to remain Hungarian”
After calling NATO an enemy and a paper tiger, Viktor Orbán also courted Vladimir Putin in Sochi at the Valdai International Discussion Club event, 444 reports.
"Nationaist political forces are gaining momentum in Europe. In France and in Germany as well. Hungary, under the leadership of Viktor Orbán, has of course long held this position. If these forces continue to grow stronger in Europe, Europe will be reborn,"said the Russian president in his speech, and then, in response to a question, he also touched on next spring's Hungarian elections. He claimed that he does not follow Hungarian domestic politics, he emphasized that the majority of Hungarians want to remain Hungarian and will therefore support Orbán. If they do not want to remain Hungarian, then they should support Ursula von der Leyen, “but then they will become Ursula von der Leyens.”
The Russian president expressed his support for the Hungarian prime minister by emphasizing NATO's weakness in the same speech. After Trump called Russia a paper tiger last week, Putin now accused the Atlantic bloc of the same thing.
"A paper tiger. What comes next? Here, deal with this paper tiger. If we fight the entire NATO bloc, move forward and are confident, and we are the paper tiger, then what is NATO itself?"Putin said, warning the United States that if it supplies Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, it will be seen as another dangerous escalation that will damage Russian-American relations.