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Hungary is set to make increased purchases of Russian gas this winter, Moscow’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom said, despite growing criticism in the West that the arrangement is funding the war in Ukraine.
Speaking on state television on Sunday, Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller said that “significant additional volumes are reaching the Hungarian market.” He added that 1.3 billion cubic meters of gas have already been delivered to Hungary on top of existing contracts this year.
“We will supply additional volumes on an ongoing basis in the autumn-winter period of the coming winter,” said Miller, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. and the U.K. for his role in supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week in Beijing, with the discussions centered on gas and oil shipments, as well as the supply of nuclear fuel. Orbán has previously said Budapest “will not allow sanctions that would further increase Hungarian inflation,” and held up discussions of tougher restrictions at an EU level.
David Pressman, the American ambassador to Hungary, blasted the Orban-Putin meeting as “troubling” and said there is now a need to discuss the central European nation’s “deepening relationship with Russia.”
Hungary’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade declined to confirm or comment on Gazprom’s statement, with a switchboard operator telling POLITICO that the country’s officials are enjoying a long weekend off to mark Republic Day — commemorating the 1956 attempted revolution against Stalinist repression that saw as many as 3,000 Hungarians killed by Soviet forces and their local proxies.
In April, Oleg Ustenko, economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that a series of new deals between Hungary and Russia made the EU member state complicit in the Ukraine conflict. “You have to be completely blind not to see what kinds of crimes you are sponsoring. Buying more gas from the Russians means you are giving them more capacity to escalate the war,” he told POLITICO.
“The security of Hungary’s energy supply requires uninterrupted transportation of gas, oil and nuclear fuel,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said following an agreement earlier this year that allowed Gazprom to sell additional supplies in the country. “To meet these three conditions, Hungarian-Russian energy cooperation must be uninterrupted. It has nothing to do with political preferences.”
