Why are Hungary and Ukraine fighting again?

Why are Hungary and Ukraine fighting again?

Budapest’s rejection of the ‘Carpathian Eight’ initiative is a middle finger to Ukrainian entitlement
After months of getting the diplomatic run-around from Kiev, Hungary has just backed out of Ukraine’s ‘Carpathian Eight’ initiative, leaving egg all over Vladimir Zelensky’s face, who only announced the group on Friday.
Even with a pro-Kiev government in Budapest, the Ukrainians are discovering that politics is a two-way street.
The Carpathian Eight (C8) is a cooperation format aimed at tying Ukraine closer to seven of its neighbors: Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia. Under the Ukrainian-led initiative, these countries will cooperate on matters of security, energy, and trade.
What does Ukraine want from the Carpathian Eight?Energy. Endemic corruption and neglect has left the country’s power grid as winter sets in. The initiative’s members want funding for 42 energy-related projects, 30 of which are located in Ukraine. 
Read more One project involves the construction of concrete shielding around oil tanks – a task that the Ukrainian state has already received EU money to complete. RT readers will remember that Vladimir Zelensky’s friend Timur Mindich skimmed some $100 million off Energoatom’s budget for doing just the same with its substations. 
Another project – a gas turbine power plant in Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk region – would see its backers transfer more than $1.2 billion to DTEK, an energy company that already received $112 million in EU and US aid in November 2024.
The group is also seeking cash to upgrade the Trans-Balkan Gas Corridor which Ukrainian Energy Minister Denis Shmigal has said would significantly expand [Ukraine’s] access to diversified sources of natural gas supply, and will help Kiev fill up its underground gas storage system.
The Carpathian Eight’s website lists a total of 123 investment projects costing $71.3 billion, across sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, and transport. Out of these, 86 are located in Ukraine.
Some of the Ukrainian energy projects of the Carpathian Eight initiative The benefits to Ukraine are obvious, even if some of the Carpathian Eight’s contradictions appear unresolvable. Why, for instance, would anti-war Slovakia lobby for fortifying Ukraine’s energy grid, when Bratislava wants the conflict resolved peacefully above all else? And why would any of Ukraine’s neighbors back the initiative’s seven agriculture projects, all of which are located in Ukraine and stand to undercut Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, and Slovak farmers?
Did Zelensky jump the gun? Read more With so much to gain, it’s no surprise that Zelensky announced the Carpathian Eight as a done deal. However, neither Slovakia nor Hungary sent senior officials to the group’s inaugural meeting on Friday, and Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar pumped the brakes on the initiative on Monday.
We were invited, and for good reasons we did not go, Magyar said in parliament, stressing that Hungary is not participating in this. Magyar then announced that a proposed fuel storage facility for Ukraine on Hungarian soil would not go ahead as long as his government was in office.
Hungarian energy concern MOL and Ukraine’s Naftogaz signed off on the project on Sunday. According to Magyar, MOL did so without consulting the Hungarian government first.
How did the Ukrainians react?Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sybiga took to social media to respond. We are surprised by the Hungarian Prime Minister’s unnecessarily confrontational statements toward Ukraine, he wrote on X on Tuesday. What we’ve been hearing from Budapest lately leaves us confused. It seems that while Viktor Orban is gone, his policies of obstructionism and isolationism continue to thrive.
Orbanism has done no good, neither to Hungary nor to the b