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
If it's narrowly, directly concentrating just Ukraine and Russia, it's a real challenge, intellectually and politically, to any president of the United States. But it's not my job again.
No way back. So I think, you know, we are different nations. It's not my job to make any comment neither on Russia, but Russia is a military-based country. So the mindset is about, okay, the mindset for you, mindset for me, when we speak about democracy, what is the first question which came to my mind? You concentrate your ideas around freedom, yeah? Of course.
Okay, but it's not the case in Russia. In case of Russia, it's security of the nation. than democracy and other issues, which are important, but the number one is, because it's a too big country, to keep it together, it is number one historical challenge and mission for the leaders. So it's a different mindset again.
So if you have that kind of country and you insult them politically, try to isolate them politically, try to kill them economically, then support his enemy by all the means. And after a few years you say, no, We don't think too much seriously, so come back and cooperate with us. It doesn't work.
So we made a historical mistake, which is decisive for at least 100 years, and based CEMENT, the Chinese-Russian cooperation, for 100 years. So we have to see that kind of block as a block. Probably Russia will make a deal with us on many issues, but we'll never give up that kind of final background, what China means.
If you would be in the shoes of Vladimir Putin, I think you would do the same thing. Never give up that kind of background, which was the real and only background. Can you imagine if the China would not be in that relation with Russia and use the possibility being attacked from West and try to squeeze from the East Russia, you know? But Chinese did not do so.
They said, we don't accept that kind of Western approach to this war. So it's historic. It's not just a war of the decade. It will have an impact for long, long, long, long decades. We will live with that. Even our kids will live in that age. But Russia will never come back to the West as it was. Never again. Sorry to say that. I'm not happy with that because... Russia is too close to Hungary.
And the Ukraine. What is basically, again, the problem? The Russians accepted, in a very difficult way, that Central European countries like my home, Hungary, became members of NATO. They always criticized that move. saying that it's unfair because it was promised.
Nobody knows exactly whether it did happen or not, but it was promised that the ex-Soviet Union-dominated territories will now join NATO. But we did. Good for us anyway. And the Russians started to live with that. In that concept, Ukraine was the buffer zone between NATO and Russia.
And then now, as we started to incorporate more and more Ukraine, first at the military level, developing their army, then even at the diplomatic level to speak about the possible membership of Ukraine to NATO, we converted the buffer zone into a war zone. So it's not anymore a buffer zone. That's the problem. And it's history. It's not about one or two decades issue.
So how we imagine the territory between the NATO and Russia, how we call it and how to manage it, how we provide the future for the people and the territory. So these are the real big and difficult challenges ahead of us. One big change. When we jumped into the war, that was always my argument to the Westerners that, Don't consider that war as our own war. It's not a war of the West.
It's a war between two Slavic nations, a brutal but a brotherhood war. Russians and Ukrainians, isolate them, help them, but don't say that this is our war. That's exactly what you have done. Basically, Biden president came to Warsaw and said, Putin must fail. Guys, it means that you are in the war. So why we have done it? Nobody knows the answer of that. So it was a very short-sighted idea.
Probably they thought that they could weaken Russia. I was always sure at the very first moment that a war will make Russia stronger than it was prior to the war. That's our history. First World War, Second World War. When they start the war, they are weaker. As the war is going ahead, they are getting stronger and stronger and stronger.
I think two reasons. One is that they have an interpretation of the Second World War. that Russia was able to win against Germany just because the Anglo-Saxons supported them. That's first. Second, you know... May I ask you to pause? And you don't believe that's true? I think to a certain extent it was true.
So a lot of support came from the United States, especially to Russia, especially ammunition, weapons, and so on. So I can't say that that was the precondition. I don't underestimate the heroic attempts of the Russians to defend their own land, even against the Hungarians anyway, because we were on the other side. But it's true that the alliance with the West
played a role that Russia was able to survive the German attacks. So that's exaggeration on the Western side of that story, probably. And the second, don't forget that in the 90s, in the 90s, I was prime minister when President Putin came into power, 1990. I was first time prime minister at that time. And I do remember how was the 90s. In the 90s,
There was the Washington Consensus, which is a theory of how to reorganize the world economy, privatization, competitiveness, and so on. And global capitalists started to invest into Russia, and they had a feeling that now they find the key how to integrate the Russian economy and the huge, vast Russian territories and raw materials, energy supply territories into the world economy.
That was the 90s. And they did it. They made a huge amount of money. George Soros, who I always would focus to follow anyway to understand what's going on, did it. But the Russians were not satisfied with that at all. And then there was a change. President Putin came to power and said, guys, this integration to the world economy, not the way which is serving the interest of Russia.
And they cut many things. And many Americans and European investors have to realize some losses. And I think the idea that they were so close to get it, to get the major source of the profit, and it was stopped by the same man, there is a personal revenge element in their way of thinking. I'm sure of that. Sorry, that's too much probably to say about it.
The Russians had their own concept how they would like to be integrated into the world economy. And that concept was different from the American concept and from the European concept, of course. Hungary is part of that. So when we realized what is the new strategy of the Russians, the Hungarian companies went to Russia to make their business.
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