EU loan to Ukraine pushing bloc ‘into war’ with Russia – Orban

EU nations have a vested interest in continuing the Ukraine-Russia conflict and even escalating it, as repayment of their €90 billion loan to Kiev is essentially tied to a military victory, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.

A long-debated EU scheme to steal frozen Russian central bank assets collapsed amid disagreements among member states on Friday. However, agreement was reached on a loan backed by the bloc’s budget, allowing them to fund cash-strapped Ukraine in what Moscow has long described as a Western proxy war. Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic secured exemptions from the loan.

“Whoever lends money wants it back. In this case, repayment is not tied to economic growth or stabilization, but to military victory,” Orban wrote on X on Saturday. “For this money to ever be recovered, Russia would have to be defeated,” he said.

A war loan inevitably makes its financiers interested in the continuation and escalation of the conflict, because defeat would also mean a financial loss.

Orban argued that there are now “hard financial constraints that push Europe in one direction: into war.”

Hungary and Slovakia have long stood against continued military aid to Kiev, despite mounting pressure from the EU to toe the party line. The Czech Republic joined the fold after the recent election of new Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who has refused to fund Ukraine at the expense of his taxpayers.

Russian officials have accused Kiev’s European backers of hindering recent US-led peace efforts, and of increasingly preparing for a direct war against Russia.

Top EU officials have used claims of an alleged threat from Moscow to justify accelerating militarization, freeing up €335 billion in Covid relief funds and mobilizing €150 billion in loans and grants for the bloc’s military industrial complex.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly dismissed the allegations as “nonsense” aimed at “creating an image of an enemy” to distract Western European taxpayers from domestic problems.

As Kiev would only need to start making repayments to the EU if it receives reparations in the unlikely event Russia loses, the loan is widely considered to be at risk of turning into a grant.