Orbán said it was important that “we are members of a joint military defence alliance” and there were similarities of thinking between the two countries, with “the basic beliefs are identical”.

The US is also a Christian country and economic ties show “the image of a success story”, he said. At the same time, he said the US was not unified and showed an image “of a more divided country with large party political differences”.

“When it is a Democrat president in the White House, then relations are more difficult and when there is a Republican, then they are easier,” Orbán said, adding that the Republican point of view was closer to the Hungarian government’s views on basic issues.

He said the US was free to send “any ambassador it wants” to Hungary, and “we must accept that the American ambassador represents the US’s opinion in Hungary”. He said it was “unusual that the US embassy uses street billboards to represent this American opinion.”

Orbán said the billboards showing “Russians go home” seemed to suggest “that they are one step behind” because “we have already sent them home”.

Orbán: Measures Announced By US Not Sanctions Against Hungary

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in an interview to public radio on Friday, said the punitive measures announced by the US embassy were not sanctions against Hungary. The list announced by Washington includes 34 private individuals, including a single Hungarian and others from countries including Cyprus, Austria and Liechtenstein, he said, adding that the action focused “basically on finance professionals”.

Orbán said Hungary never agreed with the usefulness of sanctions but did not question anybody’s right to introduce them. “They have been acknowledged and will be respected,” he added.

The Budapest-based International Investment Bank (IIB) could have played an important role in developing central European economies, he said, but ever since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine it was clear the bank’s potential had been circumscribed and the recent sanctions “destroyed it”.

Under these circumstances, he added, Hungary’s participation in the bank’s future activities had become senseless, and it therefore withdrew its delegates from the bank and quit the IIB.

Orbán: Hungary Resisting Attempts to Force it into War

The United States is not abandoning “its plan” to force everyone into a war alliance, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday, adding that Hungary would not “allow them to force us into the war”.

Orbán said the US appeared “a safer place” on the map, “but you can’t say this about the Carpathian Basin”, and global political risks were different in Berehove (Beregszász) and Budapest compared with America. “Justifiably, we expect the United States to take Hungary’s special situation into consideration,” he said.

“We’re on the side of peace, and that is where we want to remain,” he said. The prime minister said that if there were a world war, it would be nuclear.

Orbán said the situation in Ukraine was deteriorating every week, while the danger of the war escalating was growing. He added that reports suggested that Britain was sending depleted uranium ammunition to the front in Ukraine, while Russia was deploying tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.

“This is of course not a nuclear bomb, but it is one step closer to the world of the nuclear toolkit,” he said.

 “The fear that works its way through all of us, that the further escalation of war could result in the involvement of some sort of nuclear weapon, is not literary exaggeration,” he said. “God save us from that!” he added.

Orbán: Govt For Peace, Security Has 'Overwhelming' Support in Hungary

The pro-war left wing has a fraction of the support of the national government of peace and security, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told public radio on Friday. Orbán said he strove to find points of agreement in dialogue with the left in the interest of unity.

“[I]f a country agrees on big things, we are all the stronger,” said, adding that it was regrettable that the left wing was not in the Hungarian peace camp.

He said the government was trying to offer “a bridge to the pro-peace camp”, and this is why the ruling parties submitted a parliamentary resolution expressing Hungary’s unwillingness to take part in the war in Ukraine or supply weapons.

Orbán said the international community should focus its energies on working for negotiations that lead to a ceasefire and peace. “The left did not cross this bridge…” he said, adding that “hope dies last”.

Orbán said Ukraine financially was “a non-existent country” as the EU, including Hungary, financed its operations.

“This is ruining Europe,” he added. He said European public opinion was not yet at the point where European leaders would change their position on the war and sanctions, “but the moment of truth will come”, adding that Europe’s security and economy were being “ruined” in the meantime.

Orbán said the war would be over the moment Europe and America “answers ‘no’ to the question” of whether they would continue supporting Ukraine financially. With tens of billions of euros missing from the European economy, “this cannot continue indefinitely,” he added.

Meanwhile, the prime minister called the French president’s visit to China “very important”, saying a “different voice” had appeared looking for potential partners rather than potential enemies, and he likened this to “Hungarian common sense”.

Hungarian foreign policy’s aim, he added, was to gather friends, not enemies. The prime minister said that Emmanuel Macron’s talk of European strategic autonomy also pointed in this direction, and it “degraded Europe’s spirit” to take over the foreign policy of other countries. “Europe must start from its own interests,” he said.

France, he said, was Europe’s only leading power able to raise questions in a historical framework, and, he added, if only the French president were called de Gaulle everyone would agree with him on almost all issues.

Orbán said that Macron was honourable, though he did not conceive of Europe’s future in the same way as Hungary, “as we believe in a Christian renaissance”, while Macron saw the need to make a liberal Europe globally competitive.