tyb
Putin’s buddy Orbán pushes EU to the brink over Ukraine
https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-russia-buddy-hungaria-viktor-orban-pushes-eu-brink-ukraine-aid/
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán regularly pushes the EU to the cliff edge, but diplomats are panicking that his hostility to Ukraine is now about to finally kick the bloc over the precipice.
A brewing political crisis is set to boil over at a summit in mid-December when EU leaders are due to make a historic decision on bringing Ukraine into the 27-nation club and seal a key budget deal to throw a €50 billion lifeline to Kyiv’s flailing war economy. The meeting is supposed to signal to the U.S. that, despite the political distraction over the war in the Middle East, the EU is fully committed to Ukraine.
Those hopes look likely to be knocked off course by Orbán, a strongman who cultivates close ties with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and who is widely seen as having undermined democracy and rule of law at home. He is demanding the whole political and financial process should be put on ice until leaders agree to a wholesale review of EU support for Kyiv.
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There is a constant stream of attacks coming from Budapest against Brussels, on issues ranging from democratic deficit to culture wars over the EU’s migration policy. The latest example is an aggressive euroskeptic advertising campaign featuring posters targeting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen herself. The posters show von der Leyen next to Alexander Soros, the son of George Soros, chair of the Open Society Foundations, with the line: “Let’s not dance to the tune they whistle!”
“Nobody feels comfortable given what’s going on in Hungary,” Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn told reporters on Thursday. “It’s very difficult to digest given the campaign that he’s leading against the EU and against the president. When he’s asking his people many things, he’s not asking if the Union is so much worse than USSR why is he not leaving?”
But Orbán seems more eager to hijack the EU from within rather than jump ship, as the U.K. did. Increasingly, he also feels the wind is blowing his way after the recent election results in Slovakia and the Netherlands, said Krekó, where the winners are on the same page as him when it comes to Ukraine, migration or gender issues.
precipice/muh russia/soros all rolled into one