Vienna He was certain of the suspicions of Western European government headquarters: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was already under observation in Brussels due to his national obstinacy, visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday.
As Hungarian state media previously reported, Putin values Hungary as “one of the few countries that stand by their own opinion about the situation in Europe”.
No EU country is as close to Russia as Hungary. And as proof of this, Orban announced before his trip that he wanted to ask Russia for cheap gas. Hungary’s opposition reacted with outrage. “Viktor Orban is once again undermining the common line of the European Union,” said an opposition politician.
After the meeting, Orban also emphasized the diplomatic nature of his trip. “My visit has a peacemaking purpose,” Orban said after the nearly five-hour meeting with Putin. He warned of a new Cold War. “In this situation dialogue is necessary.” He therefore welcomes talks between Russia and the western allies.
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One thing is certain: the more than 100,000 Russian soldiers deployed on the Ukrainian border may be hundreds or even a few thousand kilometers away. But the countries of Eastern Europe have a history in which violence and threats were far more present than peaceful cooperation with their big neighbor.
Hungary and Slovakia border directly on Ukraine, only the Czech Republic is a little further west. And Poland recently experienced a mixture of a migration crisis and paramilitary maneuvers on its border with Belarus.
More on the Ukraine crisis
Since the end of the Eastern bloc, the four so-called Visegrad states have found their political and economic place in the EU – and the necessary security guarantees in NATO membership. At the same time, with the exception of Poland, they sought good relations in the East, as an at times opportunistic strategy to protect against the background of their own geopolitical vulnerability.
But the fiercer competition from the great powers – keywords like the annexation of Crimea, espionage scandals, China’s power politics and Russia’s most recent threatening gestures – are causing Eastern Europeans to seek proximity to the West, especially to the USA. The relationship between the four countries and Russia was never uniform.
Since regaining its sovereignty after 1989, Poland has been one of those states that stood for a robust policy of deterrence against Moscow. The Czech Republic and Slovakia tacked.
Hungary, on the other hand, opened up to investments from Russia and China even before Viktor Orban. The highlight was the agreement on a billion-dollar loan from Moscow for the construction of the Paks II nuclear power plant, concluded just weeks before the Crimean peninsula was annexed in 2014. Since then, Russia has maintained a presence in strategically sensitive areas. The International Investment Bank, which has been said to have secret service connections since Soviet times, settled in Budapest.
Moscow’s importance as a trading partner of the Visegrad states pales in comparison to the EU: with Germany alone, the volume is almost ten times greater than that with Russia. Due to the past as satellite states of the Soviet Union, however, investments are concentrated in geostrategic areas such as energy supply; the infrastructure for gas, coal and nuclear power plants that has grown over decades creates dependencies on large neighbors.
In the capital of Ukraine, people are watching the reaction of the West – and are hoping for clear announcements to Russia.
(Photo: imago images/NurPhoto)
Dealing with it varies. While Poland is one of the toughest critics of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and wants to make itself independent of Russian gas, Slovakia will probably remain dependent on the raw material from Russia in the future. Hungary and the Czech Republic, on the other hand, import a lot of gas from Russia, but at the same time have diversified their sources.
Hungary has significantly increased its dependence on Moscow for nuclear energy: Rosatom was awarded the contract for the power plant in Paks without a tender. In contrast, the Czech Republic took a tougher course in the course of the deep diplomatic conflict over Russian espionage and sabotage in an ammunition depot: in spring 2021, parliament passed a law that excludes Russia and China from contracts in strategically important areas.
Romania had issued a similar regulation the year before. In both cases, the focus was on new EU rules for reviewing investments in security-related sectors. More decisive, however, was the pressure from the USA, or at least the concern about bilateral relations: NATO, and more precisely the USA, is the only guarantor of security for the East Central Europeans.
“When it comes to a big animal like Russia, you need a big stick, and the EU doesn’t have that,” says Slawomir Debski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs. In view of Europe’s very limited military capacity to act, the concept of strategic autonomy is also not taken seriously.
Massive investment in the military
Nationally, however, the four countries have significantly increased their military budgets. The Americans have been pushing for years for the Europeans to shoulder a larger part of the defense burden and have been expanding their military presence in the east of the EU since the Crimean crisis. Donald Trump also used the diplomatic offensive in Eastern Europe as a means of exerting pressure on Germany.
The efforts were not without effect: Hungary increased security cooperation with the Americans and, despite domestic political resistance, ratified a new defense agreement in 2019 that allows American soldiers to be stationed temporarily. A similar treaty was negotiated with Slovakia, which still has to go through the parliament in Bratislava.
Alleged American plans to train Ukrainian insurgents in neighboring countries in the event of a Russian invasion have recently sparked new controversy. The Kremlin is demanding that NATO close its bases in post-1997 states as a condition for withdrawing its troops from Ukraine’s eastern border. In Eastern Europe, however, the development is going in the opposite direction. This is accompanied by the modernization of military airports and large arms deals.
The same applies to most Eastern European countries: Russia’s threatening gestures have strengthened their ties to the West.
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