Viktor Orban
speaker
146 appearances
6 recordings
4 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 13 Apr
Viktor Orban’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 2.
Appearances
We launch a war with China on trade issues. We initiated the tariff war with China. And then we launch a war with Russia on energy. So why is it a good policy? In Central Europe, we did just the opposite. We built up a good relation with the new Republican administration. 44% of all European investment from China arrived to Hungary last year. 44% of all European.
And we maintained the communication and cooperation even with the Russians. So connectivity is the word, not blocking. The European Union tried to build a block instead of running a strategy based on connectivity and do a common sense-based business with everybody who can provide something good for the European Union. But Central Europe does exactly what I'm saying about.
Slovaks do it, Hungary do it, Serbia do it.
It's so ridiculous that it's always a dilemma to me to react at all or not. But, okay, if I take it seriously, you know, I am not a pro-Putin man. I'm a pro-Hungarian guy, you know, because my job is to serve my nation. That's first. Second, we have some memories with the Russians. It's not a honeymoon anyway.
You know, Hungary, just to the audience, Hungary is dominated by always three major powers. One, Germany, I mean, Berlin, then Moscow, and Istanbul. So we are living just in the middle of that. Each of them occupied at least once. Russian street, you know? So that's the menu card, what you have if you are living in that peculiar part of the European Union. Sounds like a lot of fun.
So therefore, I decided when I came back to power in 2010, and I made a deal with President Russia, President Putin, that whatever was the history between the two nations, let it to the historians and discuss it. And we should find a reasonable cooperation and do it economically as much as we had. And we did. And it worked. It was good. You know, Russians always kept their words.
When we agreed on anything with Putin, that was done on my side as well. So therefore, my attitude to the Russians is not that negative and crazy as many of the Western leaders at this moment. And my position on this war between Ukraine and Russia always said that, guys, don't forget that this war is not about Ukraine. Don't make a mistake.
The strategical reason of this war is called enlargement of NATO. So the question is whether we would like to enlarge NATO or not. If we would like to enlarge NATO, the Russians will never accept it. Whether you like it or not, you know, they will not let us to move closer to their borders. But this is the main issue, enlargement of NATO.
So then when the war has broken because Russia invaded Ukraine finally to stop the NATO membership and occupy the territories, I said to my colleagues that we should isolate NATO As much as we can and as soon as we can, this whole conflict. Otherwise, the conflict will accelerate, eating up more and more money, more and more casualties, more and more deaths, now hundreds of thousands of widows.
When two Slavic nations are in war, it's serious. Because they are both military-based nations. So it's a tragedy what's going on. It's really brutal. It's not just a geopolitical game, you know. It's a human tragedy anyway. So I said, we should isolate them and stop killing. But what now the Western strategy is that keep killing as long as it takes. So that's what they are doing.
So unfortunately, I remain alone. We voted, and I was the only one who was against the involvement of European Union to the war. Later on now, the Slovakians follow the same track, plus Vatican. So Vatican, Slovaks, and Hungary. And now, Donald Trump president.
So that's a new story because your president following exactly the same track, which was offered by us, I mean, by Hungary in the last three years. So another good news.
Is it my job to answer to that?
No, you don't. When I will, in my years in pension, I'm ready to answer to that. I'll try to survive rather.
So just start with a very narrow Hungarian approach. Because of the sanctions and the war, we are losing every year around 7 billion euros. Hungary is a small country, can you imagine? Just Hungary? Just Hungary, just Hungary, just Hungary. So altogether, we don't know the figures exactly, but Europe spent close to 200 billion euro, which is out of the European economy. So it's a sum.
That's first. Second, we isolated ourselves from the Russian economy, including the energy, which will have a long-term impact on us as well, as I said, losing our working, well-functioning economic strategy as a basis of the European economy. The third one is the migrants. I mean, they are not migrants, they are really refugees. So the Ukrainians left the country.
Nobody knows exactly how many, but tens of millions. So we are speaking about a country which one fifth or one fourth of the territory is occupied by Russia. The industrial area is totally destroyed and the people are just escaping. So it's really a tragedy. And if President Trump is not able to find a solution, That war could become easily an Afghanistan for the European Union.
Endless war, endless conflict, no way out of the conflict, eating up energy, human lives, money, everything, destroying the frame of normal life for the European Union. So we are in a serious danger. The difficulty is, and that's not my challenge, but it's a challenge to President Trump, how to convince the Russians to stop the war while the Russians are basically winning.
This is the big question. Luckily enough, it's not my job to find an answer again. But I'm convinced that if you try to find a solution just directly on the war between Russia and Ukraine, you will never find a solution.
So we should make a bigger basket to incorporate the issue of reintegration of Russia into the international security order, to reintegrate Russia into the European security system, and to find a way of economic cooperation, basically energy. Plus Ukraine. If you make that kind of bigger basket, probably there is a chance for the deal.
Showing 81–100 of 146 · page 5 of 8
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