The war in Ukraine could turn into the European Union’s “Afghanistan,” a grinding and costly engagement with “no way out,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán claimed Friday.
Speaking to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at a media event in Dubai, Orbán noted the hundreds of billions of euros in aid the EU has spent helping Ukraine resist Russia’s full-scale invasion, which Moscow launched three years ago this month.
“If President [Donald] Trump is not able to find a solution, that war could become easily an Afghanistan for the European Union,” Orbán said, referring to the United States’ 20-year war in the Central Asian country.
The analogy isn’t a new one — but commentators have long referred to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as President Vladimir Putin’s Afghanistan, given some of the parallels between the two wars.
Beginning in 2001 immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks and ending in 2021 with the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops, the war in Afghanistan remains the longest American war in history.
“Endless war, endless conflict, no way out of the conflict, eating up energy, human lives, money, everything,” Orbán said, continuing with his comparison. “Destroying the frame of normal life for the European Union. … We are in serious danger.”
Orbán, who is one of the few European leaders to remain friendly with Putin, repeated Kremlin talking points that Russia invaded Ukraine in a bid to stop it from joining NATO.
On Friday, he defended himself against charges that he is allied with Putin. “I’m not a pro-Putin man, I’m a pro-Hungarian guy,” he said.
“The difficulty is … how to convince the Russians to stop the war while the Russians are basically winning,” Orbán added. “This is the big question.”
Western support for Kyiv would not last forever, he argued. “My heart is with the Ukrainians,” he said, “but they are in big, big, big trouble.”
Orbán has long criticized Kyiv, taking shots at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and has frequently threatened to block EU aid for Ukraine before backing down.
The Hungarian leader made his latest remarks amid a fresh, controversial push by U.S. President Trump — whom Orbán has also nursed close ties with — to negotiate an end to Moscow’s invasion.
Trump’s almost 90-minute phone call to Putin on Wednesday sent shockwaves through Kyiv and European capitals, raising fears that Washington and Moscow plan to decide on Ukraine’s future between themselves.
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