Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday that the European Union cannot afford to finance Ukraine’s military efforts as U.S. financial aid is no longer guaranteed.
Hungary was the only nation out of the bloc’s 27 members to not sign a statement voicing support for Ukraine on Thursday, following a meeting of national leaders in Brussels.
Orban said the EU’s plan for supporting Ukraine, while also boosting the continent’s defense spending, would “ruin Europe.”
“If now the U.S. quits [financing the war] ... why would the other 26 member states have a chance to take this war to the end?” he said on state radio.
“Today it appears that I have vetoed. But within weeks they will come back and it will turn out that there is no money for these goals.”
Orban, an outspoken ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, also told state radio that his government would launch a domestic “public consultation” on Ukraine’s European Union accession in the coming weeks.
He said: “We have the so-called national consultation scheme, which we use regularly to collect the opinion of the people, so we will use the same scheme just now.”
The Hungarian government has launched over a dozen national consultations since Orban took power in 2010 on a range of topics including immigration, LGBT issues, and economic policy.
Balazs Orban and Viktor Orban are not related.
The national consultation will come as Orban faces an election next year amid an inflation crisis and the increasing popularity of the new Tisza party.
Orban’s comments come a day after European leaders came out in favor of plans to spend more on defense and continued support for Ukraine in the wake of Trump’s decision to suspend aid to Kyiv.
The Brussels defense summit, which was also attended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, took place amid speculation that Russia, emboldened by its war in Ukraine, might attack an EU country next and that Europe must take more responsibility for its own defense.
Orban, who has refused to send weapons to Ukraine since the start of the war, and kept close relations with Moscow, said that instead of prolonging the war, Europe should support Trump’s peace talks, and was the only dissenter on a joint statement of support for the government in Kyiv.
In a letter to European Council President and summit host Antonio Costa, Orban said there were “strategic differences in our approach to Ukraine that cannot be bridged.”
The 26 remaining EU leaders stated that negotiations on Ukraine cannot proceed without Ukraine and promised to continue aid, according to a draft of the statement.
Decades of reliance on U.S. military protection have left Europe in a difficult position to fill the void, as Washington accounted for more than 40 percent of Ukraine’s total military aid last year, according to NATO.
“Europe must take up this challenge, this arms race. And it must win it,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at the summit.
“Europe as a whole is truly capable of winning any military, financial, economic confrontation with Russia—we are simply stronger.”
“We must ensure, with cool and wise heads, that U.S. support is also guaranteed in the coming months and years because Ukraine is also dependent on their support for its defense,” Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz added.
French President Emmanuel Macron has also said that France is open to discussing extending the shade of its nuclear umbrella to its partners across Europe.
