Hungary has blocked a loan for Ukraine from Russia’s frozen assets until the U.S. elections

Hungary has blocked the allocation of a €35 billion loan to Ukraine, funded by frozen Russian assets, until after the U.S. elections, which are scheduled for November 5.

This was reported by “Euronews”.

Budapest is dissatisfied with the EU’s proposal to extend the freeze on Russian assets not for six months, but for 36 months, in order to provide long-term guarantees to the United States. Hungary believes that if Donald Trump wins the U.S. elections, he would oppose such an extension.

“We believe that this issue—the extension of anti-Russian sanctions—should be resolved after the U.S. elections. We need to see which direction the future U.S. administration will take on this matter. You can see the presidential election and the campaign: there are two completely different approaches to solving this issue. One is towards peace, and the other is to continue the war,” stated Hungarian Finance Minister Mihály Varga after a meeting of EU ministers in Luxembourg.

All other EU countries supported the extension of the freeze on Russian assets and the provision of the loan to Ukraine. European Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni described the situation as having “quasi-unanimous” support.

Recently, France proposed limiting the European Commission’s right to allocate funds to Ukraine without the consent of EU member states.

Hungary has consistently blocked funding for Ukraine. In 2022, Budapest blocked the allocation of €18 billion in EU financial assistance to Ukraine for 2023.