Péter Magyar picks up where Viktor Orbán left off: we are once again staying out of helping Ukraine

Slovakia will not join the 70-billion-euro aid package that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky requested from European leaders on Thursday at the EU summit in Brussels. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, speaking to the TASR news agency,said that Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar made the same decision, and that Prague is not asking for a share of the package either, since Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš had already indicated earlier that the Czech Republic would not take on any further burdens in financing Ukraine. The Central European trio is thus once again stepping aside, while the rest of the European Union is working out how to keep alive the country that has been defending itself for the fourth year now — and to make matters worse, we have to find out from Fico that Budapest is still on the Putinist track.

Today a significant part of Ukraine's budget is consumed by the war: weapons, ammunition, soldiers' pay and the constant repair of bombed-out power plants, so without foreign help there would not be enough money left from tax revenues for pensions, for teachers' and doctors' salaries, or for running hospitals and schools. Half a year ago, the European Union therefore approved a 90-billion-euro loan for Ukraine running until the end of 2027 (this was the one Viktor Orbán opted out of); according to the Kyiv Independent, this money is being disbursed without disruption, but it does not fully plug the gap, because among the allies outside the Union, apart from Norway, no one has stepped in. Zelensky has therefore now requested an additional 70 billion euros for next year's defense spending and to help the country withstand increasingly severe Russian attacks; he also asked for three hundred Patriot missiles and urged the use of frozen Russian assets. EU leaders acknowledge that next year's shortfall must somehow be covered, but there is still no agreement. According to Emmanuel Macron, the money would be raised jointly by the G7 countries, the other partners and the Europeans.

The Hungarian decision is hard to explain rationally. The burden of EU loans is not distributed as if every member state were transferring billions of dollars to Kyiv from its own budget. Member states are primarily burdened by the interest cost of joint borrowing, which amounts to at most a few euros per person per year. For that amount, Hungary is withdrawing from supporting a country that, in practice, also protects us — because if the Russian army were standing at Záhony today, Hungary's life would be shaped by entirely different questions than how much interest we pay on an EU loan. Viktor Orbán sold Hungary's honor for roughly 15 euros a month; Péter Magyar is worsening the situation for the same amount.

After the change of government in Budapest, many hoped that Péter Magyar would break with his predecessor's Ukraine policy. It has now turned out in Brussels that, at least on the question of money, he is picking up exactly where Viktor Orbán left off. This is all the more notable because Ugar previously reported that when the Orbán government loudly protested a few years ago against the import of Ukrainian grain, state actors were themselves profiting from that Ukrainian grain at the same time, causing serious damage to Ukraine as well. The legal director of the state holding company involved in these deals was Péter Magyar — the same Péter Magyar who, as prime minister today, says no to EU money intended for Ukraine. It seems one is free to profit from Ukrainian grain, but no one wants to pay for Ukraine's survival.

Ugar