Pavel Havliček: Viktor Orban miscalculated

07.02.2023, 13:08 newssky.com.ua

Pavel Havliček Newssky has asked Pavel Havlíček, who is a Research Fellow at the Association for International Affairs Research Center in Prague, to comment on the recent behaviour of the President of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, because of the offensive name for Ukraine, “no man’s land”, reminiscent of Afghanistan, as well as his defiant attitude towards the European Union. These statements are, indeed, outrageous and fitting into the rhetoric of the Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán who has since the beginning of the war greatly underestimated Ukraine’s capability to defend itself and overestimated the Russian capacity to act, which affected the Hungarian foreign and security policy stance. At the same time, he miscalculated in betting on the Russian card also when it comes to the future restoration of the trade and economic activity (‘business as usual’ type of behavior), and from that stemming his rhetoric questioning sanctions, requesting their complex review at the EU level or asking for special treatment in several of the fields, including most prominently energy, on which Hungary is bitterly dependent. All that, however, in the context that Hungary has never completely managed to stop or block the sanctions imposed by the EU as a whole, even if attempts have been made to undermine them in the past year. In any case, these statements do not reflect only the position of the EU and nearly all member states but also the concrete actions done by the Hungarian government on the practical level, on which it is not deliberately communicating to keep the balance with Putin’s Russia and keep the doors open for their engagement in the future. Українською Maryna Kovalchuk, the Newssky’s own correspondent (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland), V5 Media project leader, contributed