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• Sat Nov 8 2025

What Hungary's Orban did - and didn't - get from Trump

On the surface, the Hungarian prime minister's trip was exactly what he went to Washington for: luxuriant praise and an exemption from sanctions on Russian oil, gas and nuclear supplies.

And all that just five months out from a difficult election.

Look closer, however, and the picture is less clear cut. The US side struck a hard trade deal - and an expensive one for Hungary.

And there's no progress on Viktor Orban's biggest headache: ending the war in neighbouring Ukraine, and with it the long shadow the conflict casts over Hungary.

Let's look first at Orban's key win - an exemption from US sanctions, which a White House official told the BBC was time-limited to one year, although P?ter Szijj?rt?, Hungary's foreign minister, said would be indefinite.

The time span is interesting. Trump clearly wants to help his friend win the election in April. And the exemption even partially dovetails with the European Commission demand to all member states to end the import of Russian oil, gas and nuclear fuel by the end of 2027.

What is missing, from an EU perspective, is any political commitment from Orban to meet that demand - a commitment made and fulfilled by the Czech government. And the EU is trying to tighten energy sanctions - to the fury of Hungary and Slovakia.

Away from the media spotlight, the Hungarian energy company MOL has been upgrading two of its refineries - Sz?zhalombatta in Hungary and the Slovnaft facility in Bratislava - to process Brent crude instead of the high-sulphur Urals crude which flows through Russian pipelines.

On Friday, MOL said 80% of its oil needs could be imported through the Adria pipeline from Croatia, albeit with higher logistical costs and technical risks.

So Orban's argument, which so impressed Trump, that Hungary, as a landlocked country, has no alternative to Russian oil may not strictly be true.

Overall, Hungary and Slovakia have together paid Russia $13bn (?10bn) for its oil between its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the end of 2024.