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Politico describes Orban's way to help Trump through a loan to Ukraine
Thanks to Orban, Trump can deny America's involvement in issuing loans to Ukraine using frozen Russian assets. Moscow calls the transfer a theft of income
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban plans to block the allocation of Ukrainian loans totaling $50 billion offered to Kyiv by the leaders of the United States, the European Union and the G7 countries to help US presidential candidate Donald Trump, Politico reports.
As the publication stated, if Ukraine does not receive the loan, Trump may promise voters that he will not give Kyiv a penny from the US budget. Hungary insisted that it would not agree to payments until after the US elections. They are scheduled to be held in early November. If he wins, Trump will be able to refuse to participate in financing Ukraine.
While many Western leaders favor expanding sanctions against Russia, Hungary’s prime minister is against it. “We are putting pressure on him, but Orban has not given in yet,” a European diplomat told the paper on condition of anonymity. EU rules require all 27 allies to agree unanimously.
Orban calls Trump a friend. Last October, he expressed his support and promised to celebrate the Republican's election victory with champagne. He said the Hungarian government would open a few bottles "when Trump returns." After two assassination attempts on Trump, Orban wrote on his X page that Hungarians were praying for the former president.
On October 9, EU ambassadors approved a 35 billion euro loan to Ukraine secured by proceeds from frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank. The mechanism must be approved by the European Parliament before it can be finalized. This is expected to happen around the end of October, Bloomberg reports.
The EU's 35 billion euro loan will make up the bulk of the $50 billion loan agreed by the G7 in June. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Brussels planned to release the sum to Kyiv at the end of September.
The US and EU will pay $20 billion each, with the remaining $10 billion split between the UK, Japan and Canada. But the US later demanded guarantees that Russian assets would be frozen in Europe for a long period of time, a move that had previously been extended every six months.
Russian authorities are demanding that proceeds from assets be turned over to help Ukrainian thieves. Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree allowing courts to use domestic U.S. property to compensate for damages caused by the seizure of U.S. assets.