Trump Signals Openness to Exempting Hungary from Russian Oil Sanctions

Despite a chummy relationship, new U.S. penalties on Russian energy were likely to be a sticking point as President Trump and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary met.

President Trump said on Friday he was open to exempting Hungary from sanctions he has imposed on countries that buy Russian oil, which is helping to fund Moscow’s war in Ukraine, as he welcomed the Hungarian prime minister to the White House to discuss the conflict.

Mr. Trump signaled his openness to letting Hungary avoid the sanctions in comments to journalists just before he and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary sat down to discuss the war, as well as trade and energy prices.

“We’re looking at it,” Mr. Trump said of the exemption, “because it’s very difficult for him to get the oil and gas from other areas. As you know, they don’t have the advantage of having sea.”

The meeting had promised to be a mutual admiration summit between two heads of state who have found common ground on issues like immigration. The two leaders spoke of their longstanding support for each other, with Mr. Trump praising Mr. Orban as a great friend who was “beloved” in Hungary, and Mr. Orban calling for a “golden age” of relations with the United States.

But the U.S. sanctions imposed last month on Russia’s two largest energy companies over the war are a sticking point. Hungary gets much of its energy from Russia and Mr. Orban says that the penalties are threatening his country’s sluggish economy as he faces one of the toughest re-election battles of his career.

Mr. Trump has urged European countries to cut their purchases of Russian oil as a way to financially handicap Russia’s military campaign. But on Friday, Mr. Trump sought to draw a distinction between Hungary, which is landlocked and depends on pipelines for oil and gas, and other European countries, which have more seaports.

“It’s a great country, it’s a big country, but they don’t have sea,” he said. “They don’t have the ports, and so they have a difficult problem.”

Mr. Trump said other European countries have seaports but still import Russian oil and gas. “And as they know, I’m very disturbed by that,” he said.

The meeting with Mr. Trump was a test of Mr. Orban’s foreign policy prowess, something the Hungarian leader has tried to highlight as a strength in his campaign. He has openly sympathized with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and, like Mr. Trump, he has broken with much of Europe by calling for Ukraine to cede more land to Russia to secure a cease-fire.

On Friday, Mr. Orban said that his agenda for the meeting with Mr. Trump included economic and military issues, as well as political cooperation. But the main issue, he said, was the war in neighboring Ukraine.

“It’s a most important issue for us, and we would like to discuss with you how we can contribute to help you in your peace efforts,” Mr. Orban told Mr. Trump.

When Mr. Trump asked him later whether he believed Ukraine could win the war, Mr. Orban seemed doubtful. “Miracles can happen,” he replied.

The meeting comes as Mr. Trump’s efforts to broker an end to the war in Ukraine appear to have stalled. Mr. Trump has all but washed his hands of the conflict, and on Friday, before meeting with Mr. Orban, the president continued to offer vague assessments of how and when the conflict might end.

“I think we agree that the war is going to end,” Mr. Trump said. “Sometimes people have to fight it out a little bit longer. But I think we agree that the war is going to end in the not too distant future.”

Mr. Putin, however, has shown no signs of stopping the three-year-old invasion, and this week Russia appeared to be close to capturing Pokrovsk, a strategically important railroad hub in eastern Ukraine.

Days before the U.S. sanctions were announced, Mr. Trump reversed course on a proposed summit with Mr. Putin that would have been held in Budapest. Mr. Trump said he canceled the meeting because he said he didn’t believe Mr. Putin wanted to stop the war, a position he reiterated on Friday.

But asked on Friday if there was a chance the meeting with Mr. Putin in Budapest could still happen, he said: “There’s always a chance.”

Mr. Trump has removed some of the sanctions that the Biden administration imposed on Hungary, largely to punish Mr. Orban for democratic backsliding, though other restrictions remain, including a suspension of the personal income tax treaty between the two countries.

Heading into the meeting, Mr. Orban appeared to be most worried about U.S. sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil. Hungary imports 86 percent of its oil from Russia, an amount that has increased since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to the Atlantic Council research group in Washington.

Without an exemption, Hungary could face secondary sanctions from the United States that could result in fines or being cut off from American financial institutions. Hungary, a member of the European Union and is Mr. Putin’s closest ally in the bloc, is already exempted from E.U. sanctions on Russian crude oil exports.

To get out from under the U.S. sanctions, Mr. Orban might have to bend on another issue: E.U. membership for Ukraine.

Mr. Trump wants Europe to shoulder the bulk of Western assistance to Ukraine. The European Union has agreed to open membership negotiations with Ukraine, which would help Kyiv stabilize the country’s economy.

But Mr. Orban opposes Ukraine joining the bloc, and he said this week on social media that such a move would “bring the war into Europe.”

In recent years, Mr. Orban, an ally of Mr. Putin, has defied most of Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by refusing to endorse sending military support or E.U. financial aid to Ukraine. But in some cases, he has also avoided outright vetoing aid.

James Batchik, an associate director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, said in an analysis published this week that Mr. Orban’s unwillingness to clear the way on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union runs directly counter to Mr. Trump’s demands that Europe do more.

“Despite Trump’s chumminess with Orban, he has been the roadblock to the action the United States is demanding from Europe,” he wrote, adding that the sanctions mean “Trump has leverage.”

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