Viktor Orbán received a group of 15 foreign journalists attending the Mathias Corvinus Collegium media conference at the Carmelita on Thursday evening. The discussion was also attended by Rod Dreher, Editor-in-Chief of the American Conservative, who summarised Orban's answers to the journalists' questions.

On the Russian-Ukrainian war, Orbán said that he believes the West must understand that Putin cannot afford to lose, and will not lose, because there will be new elections next year, and he cannot run as a president who has lost the war.

Orbán also said that he believed that the time had long passed when Russia would have been able to conquer Ukraine and install a pro-Russian government in the country. "If Russia had won a quick victory, this might have been possible, but now it is hopeless." Therefore, Orbán said, Russia's goal is to turn Ukraine into an ungovernable wreck so that the West has no claim on it. They have already succeeded, he said, and Ukraine is now like Afghanistan, "a no-man's land". But Russia cannot allow NATO to enter Ukraine.

Orbán said that the West does not understand that in Ukraine, time is on the side of Russia, which is a powerful country and can mobilise a huge army, but Ukraine cannot.

The Prime Minister also said that it could not be ruled out that NATO troops would fight in Ukraine in the future.

"We are in big, big trouble," he said, because if the upcoming Russian spring offensive is successful, there will be a question of NATO countries sending troops to Ukraine. "It sounds crazy today, but if you look at the trend, how we got here, it is not out of the question today," he added.

"The West is at war with Russia. This is the reality. Every day we are getting further and further in," he said.

Orbán said the West is only pretending not to be at war with Russia, but by sending more and more weapons and getting closer to actual military intervention, Western leaders are playing an extremely dangerous game with themselves, Russia and Western public opinion. Orbán continues to reject the West's entry into the conflict because "no one comes out of this war a winner".

Asked whether Putin might use nuclear weapons, Orbán said he did not rule them out, although he added that for now only as a "a tool of warfare, and we should not fear that one day a mushroom cloud will be looming over Warsaw or Berlin", although, he added, "I cannot rule that out either". He said that if the Ukrainians cross the Russian border with Western weapons, "the future will be so bright that the West will have to wear sunglasses".

Although Ukraine has had successes against Russia, Orban does not see us in the West as being on the winning side in the long term, if only because of Russia's manufacturing capacity.

One journalist noted that the Russians have not done very well on the front line so far, to which Orban responded that this is true, but that this is how the Russians traditionally perform in war, they are weaker at the beginning, but later on they cannot be stopped.

Orbán also mentioned that forcing Russia into an alliance with Iran is extremely dangerous for Israel, and expressed his hope that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (whose adult son was present at the meeting) could be a peacemaker between Russia and Ukraine.

Orbán said that "the Germans are suffering because they know what is in their national interest, but they cannot say it". According to him, the German leadership knows that it has no business in a war with Russia, but for some reason is unable to say no to Washington.

In the Hungarian prime minister's view, a coup against Putin would not solve anything either, because he has no successor, and even if he did, he would be even more hawkish than Putin.

source: telex.hu/belfold/2023/01/27/orban-viktor-karmelita-beszelgetes-eu-ororszag-nato-haboru-joslatok