President Donald Trump has granted Hungary a one-year exemption from US sanctions on Russian oil and gas purchases, a White House official told CNN on Friday, after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met with the US president in Washington.
President Trump has for months criticized European Union countries for continuing to buy oil and gas from Russia, saying this will fuel the Kremlin’s war machine and prolong the war in Ukraine that he has worked so hard to end.
But when Orbán, who buys more Russian oil and gas than any other EU country, appeared at the White House on Friday, Trump lavished praise on the “great leader” of a “great country” and claimed that it had been “difficult” for landlocked Hungary to wean itself from Russian fossil fuels.
For Orbán, a darling of the MAGA movement, the cut saved Hungary from the severe economic shock it faced after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on two Russian oil giants last month. Before these sanctions were announced, Prime Minister Orbán told President Trump, a longtime ally, that cutting Russia’s energy supplies would “collapse” Hungary’s economy.
Exempting Hungary would cast doubt on the Trump administration’s seriousness in imposing sanctions on Russian oil exports. Analysts warn that if President Trump gives allies some leeway, other countries will step up their efforts to circumvent U.S. sanctions, inflicting economic pain on Russia and undermining their ability to hasten an end to the war in Ukraine.
“The US decision is a terrible and unnecessary mistake that will allow more than 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) to flow into the Kremlin’s war chest,” Isaac Levi, an analyst at the Center for Energy and Clean Air Research (CREA), told CNN. “By giving Hungary special treatment, the U.S. government is communicating to other buyers that it expects to be free from problems if it continues to handle Russian crude.”
Levi also questioned the basis for the Trump administration’s exemption, pointing out how the Czech Republic, another landlocked country, is getting by without Russian oil and has lower fuel prices at the pump than Hungary. “This clearly shows that the flow of oil that continues to fund President Putin’s war in Ukraine is completely unnecessary.”
Prime Minister Orban also hopes that President Trump may reopen the door to a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest. The summit was announced by the US president last month but was quickly postponed. President Trump said on Friday that his team was talking to Mr. Orbán about a meeting with President Putin.
At a press conference before his lunch with Orbán, President Trump expressed sympathy for Hungary’s energy insecurity, saying, “Hungary has a difficult problem because it doesn’t have a port.” The president added that he was “disturbed” that other European countries “that don’t have these problems” continue to buy “huge amounts of oil and gas from Russia.”
However, Hungary and neighboring Slovakia are the only EU countries still receiving oil from Russia via the Druzhba pipeline. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, EU countries moved to phase out Russian oil, but granted exemptions to three countries heavily dependent on Russian imports – Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic – to give them time to reduce their dependence.
Rather, Hungary and Slovakia used this exemption to deepen their dependence. Hungary has increased its dependence on Russian oil from 61% before the invasion to 86% in 2024. Russia accounted for 92% of Hungary’s crude oil imports this year. Meanwhile, Slovakia is “almost 100% dependent” on Russian oil, according to a report by CREA and the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD).
The report said phasing out Russian oil was “well feasible” for Hungary and Slovakia, as Croatia’s Adria pipeline “could meet the combined needs of both countries”. But Prime Minister Orban denied this, insisting that the Croatian government needed to expand the pipeline to meet Hungary’s needs.
Although EU countries continue to purchase Russian gas via Turkey through the TurkStream pipeline, Russia’s share of EU gas imports has fallen from 40% before the invasion to 11% in 2024. Last month, EU countries agreed to completely ban imports of Russian gas from 2028. Hungary and Slovakia opposed the ban.
In an analysis released before Trump and Orbán’s meeting, the Atlantic Council said the White House “must be acutely aware that despite the friendly relationship between Trump and Orbán, the United States is standing in the way of the actions it is demanding from Europe.”
But Mr. Orbán used a topic that has helped him curry favor with President Trump in the past, arguing that Hungary, a “Christian country” that has taken a hard line on immigration, is “a special island in Europe’s free sea that makes a difference.”
Mr. Orban praised Mr. Trump for repairing damage done to U.S.-Hungarian relations by the Biden administration, which imposed sanctions on Hungary primarily to punish Mr. Orban for democratic backsliding. The Trump administration has since lifted some of these sanctions.
“We are now in a pretty good position to open a new chapter, a golden age, so to speak, between the United States and Hungary,” Prime Minister Orbán said.
