The European Union “s’est une balle dans les poumons” avec les sanctions contre la Russie in raison de la guerre en Ukraine, affirmed vendredi the Prime Minister Hongrois Viktor Orban, appealing to the leaders of the EU to modify leur politique In this regard.

“At first I thought we had shot ourselves in the foot, but the European economy has shot itself through the lungs and is suffocated,” Viktor Orban said in a speech on national radio. . “There are countries committed to the sanctions policy but Brussels must admit that it was a mistake, that (the sanctions) did not achieve their objective, and that they even had the opposite effect.”

ukrainian answer

The Hungarian leader was a staunch opponent of the embargo on most Russian oil decreed in early June by the EU in its sixth package of sanctions against Russia. These sanctions affect two-thirds of Russian oil transported by ship. The EU had made a concession to Viktor Orban by exempting pipeline oil on which Hungary depends.

“Brussels believed that the sanctions policy would penalize the Russians, but it penalizes us even more,” said the Hungarian head of government.

Ukraine criticized Viktor Orban’s opinion, noting that the sanctions were imposed in response to Russian aggression.

“Sanctions make it possible for the aggressor state to be held accountable for its crimes and also weaken its ability to continue the war,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said. “It is not the sanctions that are killing the European economy, but the hybrid war (which Russia is waging),” he wrote on social media.

“State of emergency” in the face of the energy crisis

Hungary, which imports 65% of its oil and 80% of its gas, announced a “state of emergency” on Wednesday to respond to the energy crisis. The measures provide in particular that individuals who consume more gas and electricity than the average will have to pay the surplus at market price and not at the regulated rate.

“We are forced to charge a higher price, because otherwise the system is no longer viable,” explained Viktor Orban in his radio address.

Russia, for its part, has drastically reduced gas deliveries while the Russian gas company Gazprom said on Wednesday that it could not guarantee the proper functioning of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which supplies Europe and which is stopped, stating that it is unable to confirm that will recover a German turbine repaired in Canada.