VOA News | Sunday, July 28, 2024 
Hungary’s Orban: Russia stands to gain as ‘irrational’ West loses power

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday that Russia’s leadership was “hyper rational” and that Ukraine would never be able to fulfill its hopes of becoming a member of the European Union or NATO. Orban, a nationalist in power since 2010, made the comments during a speech in which he forecast a shift in global power away from the “irrational” West toward Asia and Russia. “In the next long decades, maybe centuries, Asia will be the dominant center of the world,” Orban said, mentioning China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as the world’s future big powers. “And we Westerners pushed the Russians into this bloc as well,” he said in the televised speech before ethnic Hungarians at a festival in the town of Baile Tusnad in neighboring Romania. Orban, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, has sharply differed from the rest of the bloc by seeking warmer ties with Beijing and Moscow, and he angered some EU leaders when he went on surprise visits to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing this month for talks on the war in Ukraine. He said that in contrast to the “weakness” of the West, Russia’s position in world affairs was rational and predictable, saying the country had shown economic flexibility in adapting to Western sanctions since it invaded Crimea in 2014...Read more