Ukraine and Hungary can rebuild their relationship if Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz party loses April’s parliamentary elections, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera.
“I believe Orban will lose the elections, and then we will be able to restore normal relations with Hungary, also because the Hungarian people are not pro-Russian,” Zelensky said.
The president reiterated his long-standing warning against buying Russian energy, arguing that the Kremlin quickly turns those revenues into weapons used against Ukraine.
Zelensky said Orban has never blamed Russia even after repeated strikes on the Druzhba oil pipeline and attacks on Ukrainian technicians repairing it. He added that Orban “becomes important when significant political forces give him strength; otherwise he means little. Hungary is a country that matters, but it has no military power. I don’t speak with him because he doesn’t want to, but I am in contact with [Slovak Prime Minister] Robert Fico.”
Zelensky said he told Fico, who has also called for resuming Druzhba’s operations, that “the pipeline is destroyed; to restore it, a truce is needed—and that must be said clearly to Putin.”
Recent polling shows the opposition Tisza party leading Fidesz by 20 percentage points among eligible voters.
Hungary is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections on April 12, 2026.
