Afterward on social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his chat with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban “was as frank as possible, and obviously, it was about our European affairs.” Orban made no public comment about their exchange, sharing, instead, pictures of him grinning more broadly with other far-right, nationalist politicians celebrating Milei’s ascension to power.
They may be geographic neighbors, but Zelensky and Orban find themselves on opposite sides of one of the largest points of friction roiling transatlantic politics: the extent to which the West should keep funding Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, and integrate Kyiv into the broader European project. That debate is seemingly reaching a crescendo this week in Washington and Brussels, where legislators and policymakers are grappling with contentious Ukraine aid packages.
Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of his country, Zelensky has emerged as a lion of the geopolitical West, casting Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression as a fight for the defense of liberal democracies everywhere. But his entreaties for continued support from the United States and its European partners — both in terms of billions of dollars in tangible military aid as well as binding political commitments involving accession into blocs such as the European Union and NATO — are increasingly finding a less enthusiastic audience in Western capitals.
Orban, the E.U.’s preeminent illiberal demagogue, has also played the conspicuous role of the bloc’s leading Ukraine skeptic. As his neighbors rallied to Ukraine’s defense, Orban maintained a degree of distance, fueled in part by a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin; he reportedly told Putin during an October meeting in Beijing that he “never wanted to confront Russia.” He has balked at allowing the transit of arms to Kyiv and scoffed at fast-tracking Ukrainian membership in the European Union.
“Hungary is a neighbor of Ukraine … we know exactly what is happening,” Orban told French publication Le Point last week. “Ukraine is known to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world. It’s a joke!”
Zelensky, who is reckoning with his country’s flagging counteroffensive and growing internal frustrations and political infighting, called on U.S. officials and lawmakers early this week in Washington in a desperate bid for aid. “It’s a matter of life and death for Ukraine,” a senior Zelensky aide told my colleagues. “Time is of the essence: That’s the message.”
The Biden administration has warned that its allotted funding for Ukraine is petering out absent a new injection from Congress, where Republicans are stymieing an additional funding request in part to force through their desired package of immigration reforms. Congress has so far allocated a mammoth $111 billion for Ukraine, and the White House is seeking some $61 billion more. Lawmakers disperse for the holidays at the end of the week.
“Public support for Ukraine has fallen steadily in recent months, and Republican lawmakers — particularly in the House of Representatives, where the party’s right flank has wielded outsize influence — have expressed a rapidly diminishing appetite for funding Ukraine’s war effort,” my colleagues reported. “A growing number of Republicans in both chambers have said in recent weeks that they will not approve Ukraine aid unless it comes with a major tightening of U.S. immigration policy.”
Orban, meanwhile, may try to wield the threat of a Hungarian veto in Brussels over Ukraine in pursuit of his own agenda. He could be a disrupter later this week when E.U. leaders thrash out a new financing proposal of 50 billion euros for Ukraine. A significant tranche of E.U. funds for Budapest are frozen over rule-of-law concerns in Hungary, amid concerns about the quasi-autocratic takeover of the state by Orban and his ruling Fidesz party.
Orban may leverage his ability to thwart European support for Ukraine in order to release some of that cash. “He sees this as his last chance to have some influence and wants to show that he will give nothing for free,” Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital, a Budapest-based research group, told the New York Times.
In Washington, where Orban is celebrated by a section of the Republican right, the Hungarian prime minister’s allies are also pushing to end U.S. military aid to Kyiv. According to a report in the Guardian, a number of Orban proxies appeared in a closed-door session at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has moved ideologically in recent years closer to the blood-and-soil nationalism espoused by former president (and Orban admirer) Donald Trump.
Heritage is “jettisoning the Reagan-era beliefs that first brought it glory to embrace the America First policies championed by former President Donald J. Trump—particularly when it comes to Ukraine,” wrote Jacob Heilbrunn of the National Interest. “Rather than support Ukraine’s struggle to oppose Russian domination, Heritage is actively seeking to undermine it.”
And it seems Budapest has its own transatlantic plan. “Orban is confident that the Ukraine aid will not pass in Congress,” a diplomatic source close to the Hungarian Embassy told the Guardian. “That is why he is trying to block assistance from the EU as well.”
The current mood in Washington pits establishment Republicans against Trumpist hard-liners, who resent directing American taxpayer money to Ukraine (even though much of the funding is lining the pockets of U.S. arms companies). Orban has aggressively placed himself in the latter camp and, is in turn, hailed by the American right as an illiberal exemplar, a model for how to cement power through ceaseless culture war.
European politicians now fear a Magyar spanner in the works. “With the problems in the United States, where the fresh money is blocked, it’s quite crucial that we don’t have a double block against Ukraine,” outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte urged earlier this week.
In a joint letter to their American counterparts, more than 100 senior European lawmakers pleaded to Congress to get Zelensky what he says his nation needs, no matter some of their justified reservations.
“We hear the concerns expressed by our American friends. For years, American leaders, Democrats and Republicans, have asked Europeans to take more responsibility for their own security. We agree with this legitimate request,” the lawmakers, led by Benjamin Haddad, a centrist French parliamentarian, said in the letter. “Moreover, military spending has risen all across Europe,” they added. “American military aid however is critical and urgent.”
