Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov spoke magnanimously while receiving his Hungarian counterpart Péter Szijjártó in Moscow this week. He promised that the Kremlin would ‘consider’ Hungary’s request for significantly increased gas deliveries, after Viktor Orbán’s right-hand man said his country won’t manage without more Russian resources as Europe faces a deep-freeze this winter.
It’s hard to imagine a more humiliating scenario for the EU: a member state supplicating Vladimir Putin’s regime to keep its people warm after years in which the bloc laughed off criticisms about its energy dependency on Moscow. The meeting was a dream for Russia: one of the surest signs yet that European unity on Ukraine is crumbling in the face of economic pressure, and an early hint of diplomatic normalisation with the West as the Ukraine war continues in the Donbas.
With grim inevitability, EU sanctions faltered over Russian gas. The bloc’s Herculean exertions in May only led to half-baked sanctions on Russian oil – which exempted pipeline deliveries.
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