EU bureaucrats ‘want war with Russia’ – Orban
EU officials are pushing the bloc towards war with Russia, while neglecting the interests of their own people, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed.
In an op-ed published in the Magyar Nemzet newspaper on Saturday, Orban warned that the EU is facing a series of crises, including economic challenges and the heightened threat of terrorism.
“To make matters worse, the Brussels bureaucracy that lives in a bubble has made a number of bad political decisions in recent years,” the prime minister argued. “Europe is increasingly being dragged into a war, in which it has nothing to gain and everything to lose.”
The Hungarian prime minister made his comments shortly after EU leaders nominated Ursula von der Leyen to serve for a third term as the president of the European Commission. At the same time, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was nominated to replace Josep Borrell as the bloc’s top diplomat. Known for her hawkish foreign policy, Kallas has been one of the key champions of tougher sanctions on Russia and more weapons shipments to Ukraine. She is also an advocate of using frozen Russian assets for aid to Kiev.
The Brussels bureaucrats want this war, they see it as their own, and they want to defeat Russia. They keep sending the money of the European people to Ukraine, they have shot European companies in the foot with sanctions, they have driven up inflation and they have made making a living difficult for millions of European citizens.
Orban also accused the EU leadership of “imposing their own ideologies” on the populations of member states, instead of “looking after the interests of the people.”
Orban is an outspoken critic of the EU’s approach to the Ukraine conflict, favoring a diplomatic settlement through negotiations. Unlike many other NATO members, Hungary has refused to send weapons to Kiev and lobbied against unconditional financial assistance.
He previously claimed the US and the EU were “the sources” of the “war madness” sweeping the continent, and accused Brussels of dangerous brinkmanship with Russia.
