Hello and welcome. I'm joined today by Alexander Mercuris and Sultan Koshkowicz, who's a geopolitical

analyst at the Center for Fundamental Rights in Budapest in Hungary. Welcome.

And I think Hungary is a fascinating case study, I guess. It's obviously it's not one of the

great powers, but it's definitely front and center in the great power politics these days,

whether we look at the EU, Western relations with Russia, and of course the whole issue now

of extending sanctions or not. And I also think that

Hungary often becomes a case study in dissent within the EU at least. This is something we

don't have much in the EU anymore. That is dissent. And we saw that for many years. Yeah,

there were a lot of threats of sanctions if Hungary didn't fall in line.

And especially now during the war in Ukraine, we see that Hungary has really stood out.

That is, the Europeans suspended all diplomacy with the Russians, while Hungary made efforts with Orban to go to both Kiev and Moscow to push for some form of negotiations.

And he was indeed punished by the EU for this.

And of course, now we have this energy conflict.

No point to go too deep into it.

But obviously, Ukraine suspended gas transit to Hungary and Europe, yet the EU has not

really supported Hungary in this. Indeed, it's also been silent as Ukraine attacked Turk

stream, and of course, now we see Poland has begun to use some verbal attacks against Hungary.

So I was just curious, how can we, I guess, understand Hungary's position and where all of this

comes from?

That's a big topic.

Sorry.

It's going to be a long conversation, so we are going to have time to approach it from every

...