Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar says there will be no rapid shift away from importing Russian fossil fuels if he wins parliamentary elections expected to be held this spring.
The issue is central to efforts to choke revenues which have financed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with both the European Union and the United States calling for countries to curb their imports.
"We don't want to get rid of (Russian energy sources) tomorrow, but by a target date of 2035,” Magyar said in an interview with RFE/RL’s Hungarian Service.
"That doesn't mean we won't buy from (Russia), it means that we'll find the cheapest and the safest (sources). If there's an energy crisis, there should be multiple ways to procure” Hungary’s energy needs.
Magyar’s position is important because his party, Tisza, is well ahead of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz Party in most opinion polls. Some recent polling has put the lead at around 20 percentage points. Orban has warned that Hungary faces “chaos and poverty” if Magyar wins.
Hungary currently imports around 95 percent its natural gas supplies from Russia, while during the first half of 2025, some 92 percent of its oil imports came from Russia.
Orban, who has maintained close ties with Moscow, has staunchly defended these arrangements, arguing they are in Hungary’s national interest.
RFE/RL’s Hungarian Service has sent several requests to the Prime Minister's Office for an interview with Orban, including one on October 14, but has not received a response.
The EU has set a goal of ridding itself of Russian energy imports much sooner than Magyar envisages, by 2027. It envisages doing this via EU internal market rules, meaning the decision could not be vetoed by Hungary or Slovakia, which also relies heavily on Russian supplies.
US President Donald Trump, a strong supporter of Orban, has threatened secondary tariffs on countries that import Russian oil and said that a 25 percent US tariff on India was an example of this that could be applied elsewhere.
Trump has also called on European countries to do the same and to stop buying Russian oil themselves.
Magyar Praises Trump
While Magyar did not signal an imminent change on Orban’s position on energy imports, he suggested his approach to the war in Ukraine would be different.
Orban has often blocked or watered-down EU sanctions on Russia and has spoken out against arms supplies to Kyiv.
"It seems that President Trump is not using the method that Viktor Orban imagined…that he will withdraw all support from the Ukrainians and stop the arms shipments, but (instead) that he is trying to pressure the Russians in the exact opposite way and force them to make peace, or at least a ceasefire. There are signs that this may be successful,” he said.
Magyar also praised Trump’s Middle East peace initiative.
Trump has consistently backed Orban and singled him out for further praise at the peace summit held in Egypt on October 13.
“He’s a great leader. I endorsed him the last election he had, and he won,” said Trump, before turning to Orban at the summit and saying: “You’re going to do even better this time…and we’re behind you 100 percent.”
In the interview with RFE/RL, Magyar also repeated a commitment to improve anticorruption efforts and said his party would set a limit of two terms for prime ministers.
Orban is close to completing his fifth four-year term, including four consecutive terms since 2010, during which time Hungary has faced international criticism for corruption and eroding democratic norms.
The European Union has frozen some 20 billions dollars in funding because o fconcerns about corruption and the rule of law, while Transparency International has rated Hungary the most-corrupt country in the EU.
Orban has repeatedly rejected such concerns, once telling the European Parliament that his conservative government faces “Hungarophobia in a world dominated by liberalism."
