Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has welcomed the US government’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, saying it will bring down global oil prices to his country’s benefit.
“The United States together with Venezuela … will be able to meet 40 to 50% of the world’s oil demand,” Orbán said during an almost three-hour press conference in Budapest on Monday.
It would have the power to “significantly influence global energy prices,” he said. “I see a strong chance that with Venezuela brought under control, the situation on the world energy market will be more favourable to Hungary, and that’s good news.”
Asked whether he considered the Trump administration’s decision to send in crack troops to seize Maduro on Saturday morning to have been lawful, Orbán said “a fair few” great powers were no longer guided by international law.
“The Hungarian position is that we do not wish to take a global moral stance on this action,” he said. “We look at whether this is good or bad for Hungary – and it is good for Hungary.”
The Hungarian leader, who faces next spring his toughest general election since a landslide win in 2010 and has maintained close relations with Moscow since its invasion of Ukraine, devoted most of the press conference to campaigning.
Repeatedly asserting that the “liberal world order” was over, Orbán reiterated his central campaign message that only a vote for his nationalist Fidesz party would keep Hungary out of a war for which “Brussels” was actively preparing.
(vib)