Hungary on Tuesday lifted its objection to the European Union sending 18 billion euros ($19 billion) to Ukraine after reaching a deal with the EU on funds Brussels wants to deny Budapest.
The EU was looking to block 7.5 billion euros in EU funding from Hungary over allegations of corruption that were raised after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban won reelection in April.
Under the agreement reached this week, the EU will free up 1.2 billion euros for Hungary, but the remaining 6.3 billion won’t be released until the EU’s European Commission is happy with the reforms it wants Hungary to make.
The 18 billion euros for Ukraine is expected to help cover Ukraine’s massive $38 billion budget deficit for 2023. When Hungary initially blocked the funds, it said it was opposed to the way the EU planned to send the aid, which is by all 27 EU members jointly borrowing the funds.
Hungary has also been holding out on approving Sweden and Finland’s NATO bids, but Orban insists Budapest supports their memberships. Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, said that Hungary’s parliament would begin debating the ratification of the two Nordic nations joining NATO on February 20.
Hungary and Turkey are the only two countries that haven’t approved of Sweden and Finland joining the alliance. Western officials fear that Turkey is willing to delay its approval for a few more months as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is looking for more concessions from the Nordic countries.
When this war is over, Ukraine will still be an economic basket case. With the Donets region lost or destroyed, Ukraine’s major export will be agricultural products. With a shrinking population, the labor supply will shrink. There will be too much oligarchism and the governments will be shot through with grafters.
Western companies may already lick their chops. Ukrainian labor will be more expensive than Vietnamese/Chinese but still cheaper than German or American. Nothing new here under democracy.
That rather depends on how the war ends.
The war will most likely end with Ukraine being one large crater, unless ZelBoy decides to put on his big boy undies and negotiate in good faith.
He sure as sh*t ain’t gettin’ Crimea back, and likely not Donbas.
So you believe that Russia is going to be unable to win the war? I’m asking because given that not even the Russians are working towards completely destroying Ukraine as it is their goal to take it and they would not destroy the country they want to be part of Russia.
If they are not going to be able to win the war, why are you so sure that they would utterly destroy their chance of becoming at some point part of the global trade that has enriched the world over the last many years – because turning Ukraine into a crater just because they cannot beat them in a conventional battle will make the west force that choice on the countries that do not shun Russia by themselves.
Russia doesn’t want the poorest nation in the EU; why would Putin want that albatross around his neck?
He wants freedom for the Russian ethnics of Donbas and of course, to retain Crimea.
If that is the case then why did he annex those 4 additional oblasts?
Uh…To protect the ethnic Russian people there from Ziolensky’s goon squads?
Duh.
Given that these Oblasts were not majority Russian population oblasts, and that there are also Russians in all other oblasts – your argument that they would not want the rest of Ukraine is then defective.
Nuh-uh.
Ukrainazis weren’t attacking Russian -speakers outside the Donbas, to my knowledge at least.
They were not attacking them in the very large parts of Luhansk they had nor in the very large parts of Donetsk under their control – so are you now saying that Putin annexed the 4 oblasts at least two of them wrongly or just what are you proposing?
Quite the “deal”.
Ah yes, EU with its “independent” foreign policy prolonging the proxy war and bloodshed. Hungary won’t fall in line? better call them corrupt and bully them into it. Nevermind that the Ukrainian Nazis are more corrupt by EU’s own auditors.