PM Orbán: Peace, security, faith and the future of our children are at stake in Sunday’s elections

Beginning the interview by describing the two, radically different policies present in Hungarian politics regarding the war in Ukraine, Prime Minister Orbán said that “it is quite obvious that in Hungary the national side [the governing Fidesz-KDNP coalition] says that this is a Russian-Ukrainian war, and we are Hungarians.” According to this view, Hungary is helping those who are in trouble, but at the same time, we are not taking a single step that could get the country into trouble.

“We would be getting involved in a war that is not our war, in which we have nothing to gain and everything to lose. So, the position of the national side is clear — we remain on the side of peace. We will not supply arms, we will not send soldiers, and we will not allow arms to pass through Hungary into Ukraine,” PM Orbán said. The position of the Left, he continued, is also clear. “They would send troops, they would allow the passage of arms shipments, and they would even send weapons,” he added.

Speaking about debates within NATO, the prime minister said that just because Hungary’s position on the war currently prevails in NATO does not mean that it will continue to do so in the future. “There are those in NATO who constantly want to drag NATO into this conflict, contrary to the Hungarian position. And the Hungarian Left, as far as I can see, prefers to cooperate with these major countries that would prefer to push NATO into this conflict,” PM Orbán said.

Touching upon the lack of Hungarian options when it comes to energy imports, Prime Minister Orbán said that Hungary does not have an alternative to Russian gas and oil. “The reality here and now is that if [gas] comes, it comes; if it doesn't, it doesn't. And we cannot replace it from elsewhere. And if it doesn't come, what will happen is not that the price of energy will go up by 3 or 4 forints, but that the Hungarian economy will simply grind to a halt because there will be no oil, no gas,” PM Orbán said.

Responding to the interviewer’s question about what’s at stake in this Sunday’s elections, Prime Minister Orbán said that the biggest question now is whether the achievements of the last 12 years would remain in place or Hungary falls back to where it stood before 2010. “I thought that we would have to convince people that we should not go back to where we've been before, as that was bad. We should not want to go back to that. That was until the war came along. And then, at that moment, the stakes were raised. Life, death, peace, war, security. These became the big issues,” he added.

“This election is not an already-decided game. It's an open fight. There is always a mystery to the election. People may watch the polls, but it's still about millions of voters going out and giving their opinion on a particular issue at a particular moment. There is always a mysterious part of it that polling simply can’t predict,” the prime minister said.

Concluding with the topic of the referendum on the sexual education of children, Prime Minister Orbán warned that “we are already in the 24^th hour.” According to him, “we’re already in big trouble, but the ship has not yet sailed. I am not the only one fighting for Hungary in this matter. I can see similar intellectual battles for values taking place in other Central European countries, and there, too, people like us are winning.”

“The stakes of this election are, even for an old warhorse such as myself, much higher than I could have ever imagined,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said, urging everyone to go to the polls on Sunday.