Viktor Orbán rejects U.S. "fascist" accusations, calling them irrelevant to Hungary’s priorities—family, nation, and God—while warning Western Ukraine war strategies risk a third world war; he insists Putin’s regime won’t collapse, dismissing NATO expansion as dangerous folly. Citing 1990s stability under Putin, Orbán argues Trump’s diplomacy could have prevented the invasion and praises Hungary’s Christian-nationalist values against Western liberalism’s "ego-centric" intolerance. Rejecting U.S. interference in his 2022 election, he frames Hungary’s energy deals with Russia as sovereign choices and urges a European security framework including Moscow—directly clashing with U.S. unilateralism. Orbán concludes by defending Hungary’s media freedom and governance against both American and Trump-era conspiracy narratives, positioning national unity as the antidote to ideological division. [Automatically generated summary]
As the war in Ukraine completely reshuffles the world order and threatens to destroy human civilization...
It's striking just how little information Americans are receiving about what happens there.
The nation of Hungary shares a border with Ukraine.
Its leader, Viktor Orban, the nation's longest serving prime minister, has been dealing with the Russians all of his life.
He grew up under Russian occupation.
As a young man, he was arrested and thrown into jail by Russian-backed police for his efforts to liberate the country.
And as prime minister, he's dealt regularly with Vladimir Putin, whose nation supplies Hungary with most of its energy.
Viktor Orban understands Russia and Ukraine.
So two years after we last spoke to him, we returned to Hungary to sit down with Prime Minister Viktor Orban and ask him what exactly is happening in Ukraine right now.
Here's what he said.
So in the United States, the view is that Ukraine is winning this war.
- There is more of, many more. - So this strategy what we are just supporting is a bad engineering of the strategy. - So if the Biden administration has said, our goal is to beat Russia, is to effect regime changes, to kill Putin and take him out of power.
So that's a kind of evidence of lack of sovereignty.
But it's the job of the Germans.
I would not like to criticize them.
What we Hungarians did immediately, we made clear that there is another pipeline, not just the Nordic stream, but there is a Southern stream.
Coming gas from Russia through the Southern corridor.
Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary.
And together with the Serbian prime minister, president, we did very clear that if anybody would like to do the same thing with the southern corridor, as it was done with the northern one, we consider it as a reason for war, a terrorist attack, and we will immediately react.
So don't do that.
Probably you can do it with the Germans, but you can't do that with this region.
Can I ask you just to skip around for one second about the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Days before that invasion at the Munich Security Conference, the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, said to Zelensky at a press briefing, we would like Ukraine to join NATO.
Now, Ukraine joining NATO obviously cannot, you know, is a...
When the idea of membership of Ukraine, NATO, was raised, it was in the summit of NATO, Bukharest, 2007 or 2008. Russia was not strong enough to stop it.
So there was a real chance at that time to integrate the Ukrainians into NATO. But it was rejected.
There was no agreement among the big Western countries to do so, so it was postponed.
But after two or three years later, the Russians became stronger and stronger and stronger.
And now they are even stronger.
So we missed the historical opportunity to do so.
And this window of opportunity is not open anymore.
So we can't do that.
So we can't afford to have that long borderline between Russia and Ukraine who belongs to NATO. That would mean immediate war danger to all of us, even in Washington.
So it's dangerous even for the United States.
It's not as dangerous for the region, but even for you, for the families.
We should make a deal with the Russians on the new security architecture to provide security, sovereignty for Ukraine, but not membership in NATO. So why, and I think your view is shared by many sober people who watch this, so why would the vice president say something like that at a moment when there were Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border?
You know, it's difficult to follow the mindset of a big power like you are.
So it's a different approach to everything than the approach of 10 million people of Hungary with historical experience, knowing the Russians better than you know.
You always think that you know better because of the Cold War, but it's not the case.
Using the same language, no relatives, nobody speaks the same language around us.
Germans and Slavic, no Hungarians.
So therefore, to maintain the language, to maintain the culture for this country is a big achievement by itself.
So we celebrated, even yesterday, that we did it for more than 1,000 years, that we are still Hungarians.
And to be Hungarians, we are very proud of it.
We love the nation, we love the country, and we are proud of it.
It's not very much mainstream thinking, political thinking of today's Western societies, but in Hungary we are still very patriotic and Christian and committed to that values.
Not in an ideological level, but on the streets every day.
Now, the main division line is not according to...
Ideologies.
It's deeper.
It has an anthropological character.
So on one side, in Europe and probably in your country, but in Europe definitely, there are groups of people who think that the most important thing of the world is their ego.
Themselves.
Me.
This is the center of the world.
The other camp of the people, the other part of the society thinks that it's not true.
Because there are certain things which are more important than me, than my ego.
Family, nation, God.
And because they are more important than me, I have to serve these higher-level things.
So this society has a majority here in Hungary.
And the other society, which is concentrating only on me, only dealing with myself, it's more westernized, dominating factor of the political life.
And the governments of the West more belong to the first group of the people.
I belong to the second one, and Hungary belongs to the second one.
Our constitution is concentrating on the "we", how we are linked together: family, nation, God, what is common.
So we, the Hungarian nation, that's how we speak on that.
It's totally out of fashion now in the Western European societies.
And I think that difference is important because you have competition, political system based on competition, and hopefully Trump will come back or Republicans will come back and the relationship will be again very good.
But now it's absurd.
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine that the United States government deleted the agreement between Hungary and the United States on double taxation?
But they still have the agreement between Russia and the United States.
And that means that American citizens, for those who don't know what this is, American citizens who live and work in Hungary have to pay Hungarian taxes to your government, but also full federal taxes to the United States.
When I first met him, come back as prime minister, we said very clearly, don't touch upon history.
Because the history between Russia and Hungary is rather sad.
One of the main heroic attempts of the Hungarian nation to get freedom, It was launched against the Habsburgs in the middle of the 19th century, crushed by the army of the Tsar of Russia.
They helped the Austrians because we were in the winning position.
And the Russians were invited by the Habsburgs and they crushed the freedom fight here in Hungary.
That's first.
Then they occupied us in the Second World War.
And then when we tried to get rid of their yoke...
In 1956 they crushed us again.
So history is, you know, if you ask anybody on the street that any Hungarian leader who is elected freely can be a puppet of Putin or the Russians, they say it's a joke.
It's impossible.
Because we are a sovereign country and even to the Russians we deliver many times that we are sovereign.
So I don't take seriously that kind of accusation.
But of course I try to have a...
A rational relationship with the Russians, especially on the economy and energy.
And my personal point is that without involving the Russians into a security architecture of Europe, we cannot provide a safe life to the citizens of Europe.
But now everything is going against it, unfortunately.
Because if you look at the official position of NATO as an institution, as an alliance, they're exactly saying what we said.
So no involvement and we should do as much as we can for peace.
That's the official position of NATO. But at the same time NATO says that...
Member states of NATO should do their best to support the Ukrainians.
So we should clarify that what's going on, like United States foreign policy to support and finance the Ukrainians, it's not the policy of NATO. It's the policy of the United States.
So therefore, if somebody is belonging to NATO, member of NATO, it's obvious that we are in a secure position.
Russia is not able to threat our security.
It's out of question because we are so strong.
That's the number one point.
The second is that some leaders of NATO, some member state leaders like your president, they had a strategy.
To crush the Russians somehow.
And the strategy was that the Ukrainian soldiers will fight and some member states of NATO will finance this fight by money and by military technical equipments.
And this is the way how militarily we can beat the Russians.
We Hungarians said very clear at the very first point, this strategy will never work.
So this is a bad strategy.
And now we have one and a half year of the war and it's obvious that this is I'll just ask you one last question about Trump, since you brought him up a couple of times.
But that kind of civilian war, cold civilian war, was not part of our culture.
So we can beat each other, we can argue against each other, but, you know, to do what's going on now in some countries, and even in your country, you know, to use the...
The justice system against the political opponents.
In Hungary, I think it's impossible to imagine.
You know, that was done by the communists.
It's a very communist methodology to do that.
So in Hungary, we are all aware that we are...
Okay, we disagree on many things.
Ideology, values, vision on the future, even practices of politics.
But, you know, we belong to the same nation.
Okay, we are rivaling.
But what is the final sense of this argument and competition?
To unite the nation, yeah?
To provide a better future.
You can't say that I will kill you or I will send you to the prison.
If you follow that track, no chance to unify the nation.
If the nation is not unified, you can't run for big purposes.
So competition is okay, but it must be fair, legally perfect.