Hungary’s election provides an opening for renewed aid to Kyiv — and a chance for the Trump administration to remember who America’s friends are, and aren’t.
Hungary’s election provides an opening for renewed aid to Kyiv — and a chance for the Trump administration to remember who America’s friends are, and aren’t.
A fter 16 years in power, Viktor Orbán has been decisively removed from office. While his former underlings reportedly burn incriminating government files and send as much of their ill-gotten gains as possible out of the country, Hungary’s new government looks to strengthen the rule of law and the nation’s democracy.
This is a cause for celebration. Orbán’s tenure made Hungary a uniquely disruptive force inside the European Union and a powerful tool that Russia was more than happy to use. While many EU member states have clashed with Brussels from time to time, Hungary under Orbán turned obstruction into a governing philosophy. The Hungarian government repeatedly used its veto power to stall or dilute collective European action.
That the Trump administration supported Vladimir Putin’s biggest ally in the European Union should give all of us pause. Russia is no friend of the United States and has long supported America’s enemies around the globe. It is actively supporting Iran in its conflict with the United States. Donald Trump’s administration has a hard-to-understand worldview, one in which Moscow is treated as a possible ally despite all evidence to the contrary, and America’s traditional European allies are portrayed as weak, unreliable, and hostile.
Yet the Old Continent still has some fight left in it. With the EU’s help, Ukraine has more than held the line against its much larger foe. Over the past months, Ukrainian advances on the battlefield have outstripped Russia’s, and Ukraine has stood strong in the face of Russian attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure that are almost nightly occurrences. Ukrainian drones are now striking Russian oil and gas facilities as far west as the Urals, almost 1,000 miles east of Ukrainian territory. None of this would have been possible without strong EU support. It turns out America’s traditional allies are not as weak as some in the Trump administration might have thought.
As long as Orbán remained in power, Russia could hold out hope that Ukraine would run out of resources. The Hungarian government had become a persistent obstacle to financial aid packages and sanctions targeting Russia. Now that Putin’s friend and ally has been defeated, the European Union appears poised to offer Ukraine significant additional funding.
The European Union can and must act decisively in regard to Ukraine, which has been performing well on the battlefield, liberating multiple villages and towns while holding the line across the front. Russia has, over the past few months, actually lost ground. As the war approaches a duration longer than either the First or Second World War, Moscow is searching for any lever it can use to force the Ukrainian government into accepting unfavorable peace terms. Europe must continue providing Ukraine with the financial resources and military equipment needed to prevail.
One such proposal is the use of joint EU debt to fund large-scale assistance to Ukraine. Orbán blocked such initiatives, even when Hungary secured exemptions from repayment obligations, but he no longer has that power. Sanctions policy is another area where Orbán’s defeat could have meaningful effects. His government often pushed to weaken or delay sanctions targeting Russian energy, finance, and banking industries. While Hungary alone could not overturn the broader European consensus, its resistance forced compromises that sometimes reduced the scope or effectiveness of these measures. A more cooperative Hungary lowers internal resistance and strengthens the EU’s ability to sustain long-term economic pressure on Russia.
As for the Trump administration, it is not too late to recommit to the alliance that underpinned the post–World War II order. That order brought unprecedented prosperity to billions around the globe, including America. That truth does not fit well with the politics of personal grievances, but it is still true.
Putin’s Russia is an adversary of the United States. There is solid evidence that Russia is actively supporting the military/Islamic dictatorship in Iran on multiple fronts — so the 300-plus casualties (deaths and injuries) the U.S. military has suffered thus far in the conflict are at least in part Russia’s responsibility. Russia also has long been a conduit for Iranian leaders to circumvent global sanctions placed on them. As long as Russia remains under Putin’s control, countries opposed to America — from Cuba to North Korea to Venezuela under Maduro — will find Moscow in their corner. Those facts alone make it essential that the U.S. supports and promotes the NATO alliance.
Vice President JD Vance was ill-advised to get directly involved in another nation’s political process, especially in behalf of Orbán. In attempting to burnish his MAGA credentials for 2028, Vance scored an own goal and further diminished American credibility abroad. Hopefully, he has learned a valuable — if expensive — lesson. But Vance would not have gone to Budapest without the approval of his boss, which continues to raise the question of why Donald Trump seemingly has more time for Putin and those in his orbit than perhaps any other Western leader.