(CNN) -- For months, US President Donald Trump has berated European Union countries for continuing to buy oil and gas from Russia, saying this helps fuel the Kremlin's war machine and prolong the war in Ukraine that he has been at pains to end.
But when Viktor Orbán - the leader of Hungary, which buys more Russian oil and gas than any other EU nation - showed up at the White House on Friday, Trump was full of praise for the "great leader" of a "great country," claiming it has been "difficult" for Hungary to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels.
Orbán, a darling of the MAGA movement and conservatives worldwide, is hoping his ties with Trump can win Hungary a carve-out from US sanctions on two Russian oil giants, which would punish Hungary for its extreme reliance on Russian energy imports. Before the sanctions were announced last month, Orbán told his longtime ally that cutting Russia's supplies would bring Hungary's economy "to its knees."
While Orbán hopes to pull Hungary back from the economic brink, his trip to Washington also represents the first major test of the Trump administration's seriousness about enforcing its sanctions on Russia's oil exports. Before Friday's meeting, analysts warned that if Trump is seen to cut allies some slack, this could embolden others to circumvent US sanctions, eroding their ability to inflict economic pain on Russia and hasten the end of its war in Ukraine.
As well as an exemption from sanctions, Orbán is also hoping that Trump might re-open the door to a summit with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, which the US president announced last month, but was soon shelved. Trump said Friday that his team was talking with Orbán about meeting with Putin.
In a press conference before lunch at the White House, Trump showed sympathy for Orbán's plight, and said his administration was "looking at" exempting the landlocked Central European nation from sanctions.
"They don't have sea, they don't have ports, and so they have a difficult problem," the president told reporters. He said he was "disturbed" that other European countries that "don't have those problems" were continuing to buy "a lot of oil and gas from Russia."
But Hungary and neighboring Slovakia are the only EU countries still receiving oil from Russia, via the Druzhba pipeline. In the wake of Moscow's all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, EU countries moved to phase out Russian oil, but granted an exemption to Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic - three countries heavily reliant on Russian imports - to give them time to reduce their reliance.
Instead, Hungary and Slovakia used the exemption to deepen their dependence. Hungary upped its dependence on Russian crude oil from 61% pre-invasion to 86% in 2024. This year, Russia accounted for 92% of Hungary's crude oil imports. Slovakia, meanwhile, is "almost 100% dependent" on Russian crude oil, according to a report from the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
The report said phasing out Russian oil is "fully feasible" for Hungary and Slovakia, as the Adria pipeline in Croatia "can meet their combined needs." Orbán, however, denied this, claiming that the Croatian government would need to enlarge the pipeline to meet Hungary's needs.
Although EU countries have continued to buy Russian gas, funneled via Turkey through the TurkStream pipeline, Russia's share of EU gas imports fell from 40% pre-invasion to 11% in 2024. Last month, EU countries agreed to ban all imports of Russian gas from 2028. Hungary and Slovakia opposed the ban.
In an analysis published before Trump's meeting with Orbán, the Atlantic Council said the White House should be "clear-eyed about the fact that, despite Trump's chumminess with Orbán, he has been the roadblock to the action the United States is demanding from Europe."
But, using talking points that have helped win him Trump's affection in the past, Orbán claimed Hungary, as a "Christian" country that has taken a hard stance against immigration, is a "special island of difference in a liberal ocean in Europe."
Orbán praised Trump for repairing what he described as damage caused to the US-Hungary relations by the Biden administration, which imposed sanctions on Hungary largely to punish Orbán for democratic backsliding. The Trump administration has since removed some of those sanctions.
"Now we are (in) quite a good position to open up a new chapter - let's say a golden age - between the United States and Hungary," Orbán said.
The-CNN-Wire
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