The Hungarian government wanted to remove the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, from the sanctions list and vetoed it. Now Hungary is returning to the EU line after all.
Hungary will stick to the agreements on further sanctions against Russia signed at the EU special summit on the Ukraine war earlier this week. The Hungarian state news agency (MTI) quoted Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s spokesman, Bertalan Havasi, on Thursday, who again referred to Orbán. The online portal hvg.hu had previously reported that Hungary was once again blocking the signing of the oil embargo against Russia on the home stretch.
The EU’s plan was actually to approve the legal texts for the punitive measures on Wednesday, the sixth package of sanctions against Russia since the start of the Ukraine war at the end of February. Earlier on Tuesday night, after weeks of arguments, an agreement was reached at a summit meeting in the dispute over the planned oil embargo. Hungary blocked for a long time and managed to get oil deliveries by pipeline initially exempted from the import ban.
Dispute Cyril
According to diplomats, Hungary then surprisingly demanded further changes on Wednesday. In particular, the country demanded that the planned punitive measures against the Russian Orthodox Church leader, Patriarch Kirill, be abandoned. Kyrill is to be banned from entering the country and his assets frozen. Cyril I is the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had already said on Hungarian radio in early May that his government “would not allow leading church members to be put on a sanctions list”. Orbán’s spokesman has now remarked that Hungary’s concerns about sanctions against Cyril have been known for a long time.
In view of the new problems with Hungary, the French EU Council Presidency wanted to convene a meeting of the permanent representatives of the member states for Thursday afternoon in order to put an end to the new blockade, as the Council Presidency announced. Attempts should again be made to reach a final agreement on what is now the sixth package of EU sanctions against Russia.
Just a means of leverage for Hungary?
According to information from EU circles, it was conceivable that resistance to the sanctions against Cyril could only be a means of exerting pressure on Hungary to get further concessions on detailed issues with the oil embargo. The boycott against oil supplies from Russia envisages that no more oil will be allowed into the EU by sea in the coming year. Only Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic will be allowed to import Russian oil via the Druzhba pipeline until further notice because of their high level of dependence.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin reacted calmly to the boycott threats from Brussels. The amounts released would be diverted in other directions, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. “Of course, these sanctions have a negative impact on the entire continent – on the Europeans and on us and on the entire global energy market.”
Russia will minimize the negative consequences through systematic actions, Peskov continued. Even after the US oil embargo, the Russian leadership had declared that the quantities had been almost completely diverted to other markets. The revenue was bubbling up, it said.
Russia: Markets will be destabilized
The EU also wants to use an oil boycott to prevent Moscow from continuing to finance its war against Ukraine. Due to the high oil prices, a lot of money is currently flowing into the Russian state budget, which is heavily dependent on energy exports. The Europeans in particular would now have to live with the negative consequences – meaning above all the high energy prices – Peskow explained.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the European Union’s oil embargo will destabilize the markets. “Brussels and its political sponsors in Washington bear full responsibility for the risk of deterioration in the global food and energy situation caused by the European Union’s unlawful actions,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
(APA)