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In the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war and the restoration of peace, Mr Orbán said there is no reasonable answer to the question of ‘when will there be peace’ before the parties clarify the cause of the war and who is at war with whom.
The cause of the war is that the balance of power has been upset as “in world politics, the main organising principle is the balance of power.” “There are countries, there are powers which have strength, and if the strength of each in relation to the other is such that it results in calm, in a balance of power, then this constitutes peace, construction, the economy, and then there is no war,” he argued.
He pointed out that prior to the Russo-Ukrainian war, the West and the Ukrainians had decided to do away with Ukraine’s status as an East-West buffer zone, and to move in a westerly direction, and with this the balance of power which had previously existed between the Russians, the East and the West, had been upset.
The question was, he said in continuation, whether the Russians would accept this, or would respond to this situation somehow. He said when Hungary underwent these difficult days between 1989 and its NATO accession in 1999, “the Russians were weak enough not to be able to respond.” However, as the Russians had gained in strength in the interim, “today, the reality on the ground is that if anyone wants to move closer to Russia – such as NATO as a military force – the Russians will respond,” he highlighted, adding that the Russians lay a claim to this.
He highlighted at the same time that “under international law, the Russians are not right, […] the Ukrainians are,” but what the Russians are doing is clear from a balance of power point of view: they are creating a buffer zone, if not from the whole of Ukraine, the part of Ukraine which is close to Russia, and “they will occupy precisely a territory of a size from which you can’t shoot into Russian territory,” he stated.
In answer to the question of who is fighting with whom, the Prime Minister said while “seemingly, there is a Russo-Ukrainian war,” no one can seriously think that the Ukrainians could survive for a single day without western support. “At the same time, if someone supports someone else and they’re only alive because they are supported, then those who support them, too, are involved in the war. Meaning the whole European Union without exception – not including Hungary and the Slovaks – is at war with Russia today,” he pointed out.
This is a proxy war as “the Ukrainians are waging a war instead of the West” and “most countries of the European Union seriously believe […] that Russia must be defeated in a war waged in the territory of Ukraine, and for this, money, weapons and everything else must be given to the Ukrainians,” he stated.
Hungary’s position is that rather than defeating Russia in the territory of Ukraine, we must go back to the starting point, the West and the Russians must agree on the future of Ukraine in a way which is also acceptable for Ukraine, he underlined.
He said Hungary is on its own with this position, and as it is unable to change their way of thinking and plan, “Hungary has a single option,” namely that “it must stay out of this extremely risky war situation,” he said.
He recalled that World Wars I and II had not started as having been declared world wars, and there was no way of knowing what the Russo-Ukrainian war would be called in five years’ time, but it was certain that “Hungary must stay out of this,” he pointed out.
This staying out, he claimed, is not just a question of intention, but also a question of strength. He recalled that since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war in February 2022, they had tried to create the forces “that support us, and enable us to stay out of a potentially escalating war.” This is a serious affair that is not worth risking, he said also in reference to next year’s elections.
Mr Orbán said the Russo-Ukrainian war will not end until the President of the United States of America and the President of the Russian Federation sit down and come to an agreement. Neither the law, nor complex diplomatic manoeuvres will yield a result, it is necessary for the perhaps – in military terms – two most powerful leaders of the world to sit down and come to an agreement, he stated.
He added that they would have to agree not only on the Russo-Ukrainian war, but also on all other issues that were important for the world.
Including armament because we have just entered an arms race. We want to purchase weapons from an inordinate amount of money: in NATO, this is now five per cent of the gross domestic product, while the EU is taking out giga loans to purchase weapons from. If you take out a loan, it must produce returns, and the best way for a weapon to produce a return is “if you use it,” he observed.
Mr Orbán added that we were in the middle of an extremely dangerous armament spiral which had to be stopped. This is only possible through arms control agreements, meaning that the West must come to an agreement with the Russians on the quantities of the largest types of weapons each party is allowed to stock.
Additionally, an agreement must also be reached on the world’s energy supply because if we exclude the Russians from energy trade, it may well be beneficial for the Americans who step in and sell their own oil and gas much more expensively, but in the longer term, this will destroy the world economy, he pointed out.
He added that an agreement would also have to be reached regarding the sanctions against the Russians. Will foreign capital be allowed into Russia and will the Russians be allowed to invest in other countries? These questions cannot be settled in bilateral Ukrainian-Russian military talks, and until these questions are settled, neither will the war be settled, he laid down.
Regarding assisting Ukraine, he observed that when tens of thousands a day had fled from Ukraine, Hungary had welcomed them all; also today, there are tens of thousands of Ukrainians in Hungary. He stressed, however, that Hungary was the only country which had said that ‘you will only receive as much assistance from the state as a Hungarian, there is no free money.’
Mr Orbán recalled that the Ukrainians had never asked us about what their response to the Russian attack should be. “They didn’t hold a consultation, they didn’t ask for advice, they didn’t involve us in their decision,” he pointed out. He added that we had not had a chance to influence their decision on how to respond to the Russians: with war, a ceasefire, peace or in any other way.
As they did not involve us in their war decisions, all they can ask of us is what the elementary Christian obligation to help dictates, he pointed out.
They cannot ask us to destroy ourselves, and if we go there, give them money and weapons, and even soldiers later, that will destroy us, too, he argued.
I would not like to, and indeed I will not take responsibility for a single young person dying for Ukraine, the Prime Minister stated.
In answer to the question of how realistic the threat of “the Russian roly-poly coming here and swallowing us” is, Mr Orbán said that it must be taken seriously because “there were times when the Russian roly-poly was big enough to come here and to swallow us.”
The Prime Minister said Russia has a population of 140 million, the EU has a population of over 400 million, there are another 70 million in Britain, not even mentioning the Americans. The military budget of the EU’s countries is several times bigger than the Russian military budget. He said we are much more numerous, we have much more money, our defence industry is much more advanced, and then we have here the Americans behind us. How will the Russians swallow us when they have been unable to occupy four oblasts in Ukraine for God only knows how long? he asked.
The starting point that “the Russians will come here and then occupy us” is an unrealistic assumption, and we must not deduce political steps from it, he stated.
Mr Orbán highlighted that only erroneous political decisions could stem from an unrealistic assumption.
The Russians are not in the state and the position to pose a threat to Europe today, he said, adding that they are, however, a threat to a part of Ukraine because if the West stops supplying weapons to Ukraine, the Russians and the Ukrainians will be forced to conclude a peace deal, and evidently, territorial issues, too, will form part of that peace deal, given that the Russians have territorial demands.
This is not about what will happen to Poland, Hungary, Romania and Austria later, these countries are not under any military threat, he confirmed.
The Prime Minister said the question is not whether the Russians will attack anyone else West of Ukraine, but how seriously we can take NATO’s promise regarding mutual defence because if we cannot, then we must reconsider everything.
However, for the time being, every decision – including Hungary’s armed forces development decision and the Hungarian defence industry decisions – is based on the fact that we are in an alliance system which provides mutual defence, he pointed out.
He recalled, however, that World War II had broken out in such a way that the Germans had attacked the Polish, after concluding a secret pact, so had the Russians, and the two countries had divided Poland between them. Poland had a mutual assistance agreement with France and Britain, but they did not rush to Poland’s aid. Therefore, at this time, the answer to the fears of the Polish and the Baltic states lies in the reinforcement of the NATO alliance, he laid down.
Mr Orbán highlighted that today not a single western country could afford not to defend a NATO Member State should they be attacked. Since NATO has existed, no NATO Member State has been attacked, this will not happen in the future either. “No one in their right mind” would take the risk of becoming entangled in a war with all NATO Member States, including the United States and Turkey, all at once, he stated.
The Prime Minister also spoke about the fact that since World War II, we had been used to Germany not existing as a military power. However, they have recently announced that Germany will rearm itself, and after 85 years, a situation will emerge in Europe where Germany will have Europe’s largest army and most soldiers, the most military equipment will be German and in the hands of German soldiers, and Germany will have by far the biggest defence industry, too, in the whole of Europe, he indicated.
Mr Orbán recalled that all the troubles were taking place in the Balkans now because the European Union had missed the historic opportunity of integrating the new states that had come into being after the disintegration of Yugoslavia. If the countries of the Balkans were members of the EU, the temperature of the Balkans conflicts would be much lower, he observed.
Hungary urges this in vain, integration is not taking place, and therefore, today the Balkans is a theatre for rivalry between great powers, this region has not been stabilised, “has not been anchored,” he warned.
He also highlighted that Hungary had to conclude a historical alliance with the Serbs. “If Hungary wants to stay on its feet and wants to be strong, I can’t see that happening against the Serbs, without an alliance. And the Serbs need cooperation with Hungary,” he pointed out.
He added, however, that today a part of the Serbs did not live in Serbia, but in the Republika Srpska in Bosnia. Its elected president is Milorad Dodik. That people from outside, all sorts “viceroys” delegated from the EU, should want to depose, to condemn the president elected by the Serbs of Bosnia not due to corruption, but because he refuses to implement certain decisions coming from the EU is unacceptable, he pointed out.
Therefore, Hungary will not recognise the decision of the court which found Milorad Dodik guilty. “There is no such decision for us, President Dodik remains the elected leader of the Serbs living in Bosnia, and we will shape politics accordingly,” he stated.
In Mr Orbán’s words, the Balkans has become more important also because a part of migration is coming to Hungary from the South. Therefore, we must develop the best possible relations with every country of the Balkans migration route so that we can stop the next wave of migration as far South as possible, he said.
He warned that it was a mere illusion to believe that migration would abate. Masses will set out from Africa in the direction of Europe in the tens, but perhaps hundreds of millions.
Unless we send European capital that could be used for investments – the money that we are now sending to the United States and Ukraine – to Africa, unless we stabilise the countries through which migrants are coming here, within a few years, Europe will find itself in enormous trouble, he observed.
“Africa hasn’t even stirred yet. So far, the bulk of migrants came more from the Middle East, from Syria and neighbouring countries. Africa has yet to come,” he pointed out.
At the same time, he said that in a decade’s time, one of the most important tasks of the next generation of politicians will be to stop the wave of migrants coming to Hungary from the direction of Austria.
Returning to the present, he stressed that we must come to an agreement under any circumstances with the Orthodox Christians living in the Balkans, the Orthodox Christians of Romania as well as with the Roman Catholic Slovaks and Poles North of us because we cannot otherwise preserve Central Europe as a Christian European community. He pointed out that Protestants, Catholics and those of the Orthodox faith must forge a political alliance expressly with a view to preserving their Christian roots and traditions.
If we want Hungary to remain a Hungarian country, we must build a Central European self-defence and mutual defence system against migration, or else we will be crushed and will look like the countries of Western Europe, he pointed out.
The question is whether we see enough strength in ourselves to preserve ourselves the way we are against all the odds. “And I see that kind of strength in Hungary,” the Prime Minister stated in summary.
“We mustn’t give up,” he stressed, challenging the theory that you cannot resist such enormous population pressure. By contrast, Mr Orbán highlighted that we were much stronger than we sometimes believed. If we organise ourselves well, we will not allow Brussels to force the migration pact on us.
“On the issue of migration there are only two paths: rebelling or submission. The westerners have been forced into submission, I don’t think we should follow this path, we should rebel and protect what we have,” he said.
Mr Orbán also spoke about the domestic challenges facing the Right. He said it is not that the conventional world of politics has been supplemented with a new element, the debates taking place in the digital space, but that all the information and debates have moved to the digital space, and this new arena has different linguistic specificities, a different logic of argument, and different speed, too.
He warned that if the national side failed to learn the specificities of this new arena and yielded it “to the left-wing, globalist, liberal forces” who “have been rampaging there for years now almost unhindered, aggressively,” then the Right’s convincing power will diminish.
“And if we don’t have convincing power, then there is no sympathy, there is no support, and there is no victory either,” he added, taking the view that the Right is facing an enormous challenge, they need a digital conquest so that they should be at home also in the digital space, so that they should be able to conduct debates there, too, and so that they should be able to voice their thoughts. He added that perhaps this, too, could take the government side closer to young people. He indicated at the same time that everyone was welcome to join the digital civic circles.
Regarding party preference polls, the President of Fidesz stressed at the same time that he had a clear picture of where they stood at this point in time, and based on this, he also had a clear idea of what a realistic goal was for the next elections. “We will work hard, and will win big,” he said.
He said regarding various opinion polls, some of which show an advantage for Fidesz, while others for Tisza, that in English polls which are conducted to influence those who look at them, rather than to describe the actual situation are called ‘push polls.’ He indicated that he did not say that they should not pay any attention to opinion polls at all, but they should not attribute too much importance to them.
At the same time, he said it is important to have polls which provide a realistic picture of their own situation, their popularity, their election chances, and one issue or another that is of interest to the public.
The Prime Minister was also asked about the government-critical attitudes of young people. He said for young people, rebelling is a natural part of life. In his view, liberal young people in Hungary are rebelling against the government as well as against everything that equates to power, while young people with a nationally oriented mindset are rebelling against global networks, the Soros Foundations, Brussels and international forces seeking to oppress Hungary in general.
He recommended parental wisdom and composure in this matter, stressing that it helps to sometimes remember “the things that we did at that age, the things that we thought and the things that we shouted here, there and everywhere.”
The Prime Minister listed the government programmes intended for young people, including the student loan, the worker loan, the personal income tax exemption of the under 25s, the housing support and the family tax benefits.
At the same time, he stressed that an election was not only a matter of reason and what was on offer. A number of other considerations also play a part, and so he does not believe that it is the government’s youth programme that will make the government parties more attractive for young people.
He said he sees the “path” to be followed more in peace, in calm, in understanding, in conversations and in connection, and if this can be achieved, then young people “will rebel much more against the enemies of the country than against the national government that defends the country.”
In answer to the question of whether the stagnating European and Hungarian economy or presence in the digital space is more of a threat to the re-election of the government parties, Mr Orbán said these are not mutually exclusive threats, but threats existing side by side.
He pointed out that organising a civic, national, Christian community, “forging together this diverse world is a complex and extraordinarily difficult task” in the digital world as well. Therefore, he added, the Fight Club is for “the feisty kind” who are ready to engage in arguments, while the Digital Civic Circles are a platform for people who love their settlements, families and country and want to do something for them, people who want to talk about sensible things, but who just want to live in peace, people who do not enjoy “pushing and shoving about,” people who want to avoid unnecessary arguments.
In the context of the economy, he stressed that it was the fate and future of ten million Hungarians, and also had an impact on the elections.
He said if we want the Hungarian economy to enter a robust course of growth, we first need peace because the war does not just keep energy prices high, but “the countries of the European Union also send an enormous amount of money” to the war in Ukraine, and “under such circumstances you cannot achieve a high economic growth,” he pointed out.
He drew attention to the fact that until peace was achieved, “we should be happy if we can defend what we have,” but despite this, they are trying to achieve “a few overarching goals that are important for everyone.”
He said preparations for the introduction of the 3 per cent housing programme lasted for six months because the idea conceived at the beginning of the year was based on the assumption that this year would be a year of peace, resulting in a higher economic growth.
As this did not happen, the question emerged: “either you give up the intention of achieving a breakthrough in housing, you give up the goal that every Hungarian should have a home they own, and say that there is a war, we can’t do this, or you figure something out about how it can be done nonetheless,” he said.
He said they worked on this problem for six months, and as a result, “on 1 September, people can go to the bank and take out a 3 per cent housing loan, regardless of marital status, place of residence, and even the youngest will own their homes,” he pointed out.
“There is no such thing anywhere else in Europe that you reach the age of 18 and if you decide to want to live in your own home, you can do that, […] there is no such offer anywhere else in Europe,” he laid down.
He said there is a war in vain and there is no economic growth in vain, neither have they given up on “the issue of a tax revolution” because they wanted to achieve that “if women decide to have minimum two children and work at the same time, they should be given not just a tax benefit while their children are minors, but should be exempt from the payment of personal income tax for the rest of their lives, there is nothing like this anywhere in the world,” he pointed out.
He underlined that “women, ladies who decide to have children must be supported so that under no circumstances should they be financially vulnerable; this is what the tax revolution is about.”
He recalled that in accordance with the government’s decision, they had raised the tax benefit available in relation to children by 50 per cent from 1 July and would raise it again from 1 January. From October, mothers with three children will no longer have to pay personal income tax, from 1 January, women with two children under the age of 40 will be next, to be followed by the over 50s from 2027 and the over 60s from 2028.
“What I can say is this: you can see, in the whole world, but especially in Europe, everything is stirred up like coffee dregs, and even amidst such circumstances, we have protected everything we have achieved, and have even managed to accomplish a few important things,” he pointed out.
In response to opposition claims regarding dysfunctional public services and the enrichment of a small government elite, the Prime Minister said the assets of the Hungarian state have not only not decreased, but have doubled since 2010, while public services are continuously improving, even if “we won’t be satisfied with them for a very long time because their operation requires an enormous amount of money.”
He said next year, they will spend HUF 280 billion more on health care than this year, while public transport has not only become cheaper, but is undergoing constant improvement. Notwithstanding this, “public services will remain a subject-matter of criticism for a long time to come,” he pointed out.
He said since 2010, when “a financially ruined country had to be helped back on its feet,” they have accomplished 70 to 75 per cent of the work related to this, and “if there are another 4 to 6 years, […] we’ll be able to say that Hungary has nothing to be ashamed of in any area, even compared with the most advanced western countries,” he said.
In answer to a question, the Prime Minister revealed that this summer, too, he would go on holiday to Croatia. “We still have the best chance of winning the elections under my leadership,” he observed, then in reference to his holiday, he said “if I’m given two weeks, I’ll sort myself out.”
