The US warns of the "continued eagerness" of the Hungarian government to promote its ties with Russia

David Pressman, US ambassador to Hungary, this Wednesday during the press conference in Budapest.ATTILA KISBENEDEK (AFP)

The concern of the United States about the "continued eagerness" of the Hungarian government to foster ties with Russia has been substantiated this Wednesday in the announcement of sanctions against three senior officials, two Russians and one Hungarian, of a bank controlled by Moscow and based in in Budapest.

The International Investment Bank (IIB, in its English acronym) appears on the list of 120 individuals and entities from more than 20 countries against whom the US Treasury and State Departments have adopted the umpteenth round of sanctions, "due to their connections with the illegitimate and unjustified invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation", Antony Blinken, head of US diplomacy, explained in a statement.

The IIB, which in the past had ties to the Soviet KGB, moved its headquarters from Moscow to Budapest in April 2019, where employees were granted a status comparable to that of diplomats, exempt from taxes and legal proceedings for their actions, reports the Efe news agency.

Slovakia and the Czech Republic have already left the bank, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Romania will do so in June and Bulgaria in August, so Hungary will be the only EU country to remain in the institution, of which they are Cuba, Mongolia and Vietnam also part.

"The presence of this opaque platform of the Kremlin [the IIB] in the heart of Hungary threatens the security and sovereignty of the Hungarian people, its European neighbors and its NATO allies," the ambassador of Hungary explained at a press conference. USA in Budapest, David Pressman.

His appearance occurred at the same time that from Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, where he accompanies President Joe Biden, Blinken announced the new round of sanctions on suspects of evading compliance with those imposed on Moscow.

The main affected person on the list is "one of the richest billionaires in Russia, Alisher Usmanov, sanctioned by the US last year", detailed the Secretary of State, and with him, several citizens of Cyprus, another member country of the EU, although not NATO, and traditional base of operations for the Russian oligarchs.

Although it is not the first time that the US has sanctioned Hungarian officials (in 2014 it prohibited six corruption suspects from entering the country) and the Government of Budapest has minimized Washington's concern, according to Ambassador Pressman, the announcement of sanctions comes a day after Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto signed new agreements in Moscow to guarantee the continued supply of Russian energy to his country, a sign that the strong diplomatic and commercial ties between Budapest and Moscow continue despite the outright rejection of the EU and NATO to the Kremlin's aggression.

Hungary, which belongs to both, has fostered its ties with Vladimir Putin's Russia since 2010, led by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has avoided personally criticizing the Russian president despite condemning, in theory,

Natural gas

On Tuesday, at a press conference in Moscow, Szijjarto announced that Russia's state-owned Gazprom had agreed to allow Hungary, if necessary, to import quantities of natural gas greater than those agreed in a long-term contract that was modified last year.

The price of the gas, which would reach Hungary through the Turkstream gas pipeline, would be capped at 150 euros per cubic meter, explained the head of Hungarian diplomacy.

The agreement also contemplates the possibility of Hungary paying for gas purchases in installments if market prices exceed that maximum.

With this bilateral agreement, Budapest distances itself from the plans of Brussels, which in March encouraged energy companies to avoid purchasing Russian liquefied natural gas once the current contracts expire.

In the theoretical condemnation of Budapest to the Kremlin for the war, leaks have opened up in recent months.

In September, the EU made its partner ugly by Szijjarto's meeting with the Russian representative to the UN, Vasili Nebenzia, during the General Assembly of that body, thus breaking the isolation imposed by the West on the Kremlin.

Five months later, also within the UN framework, the Foreign Minister distanced himself from the Western discourse against Russia: “This war has no winners, only losers, and the more losers there are, the more suffering.

But with weapons and sanctions [the pillars of the EU towards Ukraine] lives are not saved”, said the foreign minister in an extraordinary convocation of the Security Council on the occasion of the first anniversary of the war.

On the sanctions against Moscow,

The energy agreement signed with Moscow abounds in the distance from Budapest and underlines the possible first consequence of the wear and tear, also diplomatic, of more than a year of war: that the hitherto solid front of rejection of the invasion of Ukraine will crack if the conflict is extended.

The incipient fracture adds more reservations to the confidence towards Hungary, in the crosshairs of Brussels due to Orbán's autocratic drift in the image and likeness of the Kremlin strongman.

Hungary, a landlocked country, is highly dependent on Russian imports of natural gas and crude oil.

But in the timid alignment of Budapest with Moscow there are reasons that go beyond economic convenience.

The denial of the rights of the LGTBI community, the war for the independence of the judiciary, the repression of opponents and, in short, the autocratic drift of their respective leaders are violations of the rule of law against which Brussels has appealed, as the US is doing now, with successive batches of sanctions.

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