On Wednesday, President Karol Nawrocki will visit Hungary, where he was supposed to meet with Viktor Orban. On Sunday morning, it became known that the program of the visit was reduced, in particular, the meeting with the Hungarian Prime Minister was canceled.
"President Nawrocki decided to limit his visit to Hungary to only the Visegrad Group meeting in Esztergom," said the head of the Bureau of International Policy at the President of Poland, Marcin Przydacz.
This means that the president will not meet with the Prime Minister of Hungary, as previously announced.
The reason, as officially stated by the presidential palace, is Orban's visit to Moscow and its outcomes related to energy commitments.
"Citing in his policy the legacy of President Lech Kaczynski, who emphasized that the security of Europe depends on solidarity actions, including in the energy sector, in connection with Prime Minister Viktor Orban's visit to Moscow and its context, President K. Nawrocki decided to limit the program of his visit to Hungary," Przydacz wrote on social media platform X.
This decision was made after Prime Minister Orban's visit to Moscow and assurances of cooperation with Russia to increase energy supply. "Russian energy is the foundation of Hungary's energy supply, now and in the future," Orban said.
Even before the visit, the Hungarian Prime Minister stated that he would seek additional supplies of oil and gas from the Russian Federation after the exemption granted to Hungary by U.S. President Donald Trump. This contradicts the EU's policy of limiting imports of Russian energy sources until 2027.
Hungary maintains that the import of Russian energy sources is essential for its economic survival. Orban has repeatedly stated that transitioning to alternative sources would lead to economic collapse.
During his speech in the Kremlin, Putin also praised Orban's "balanced position" regarding the war in Ukraine.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on Friday on platform X that President Nawrocki's meeting with the Hungarian leader, "chaos in the negotiations on the Witkoff plan" and "the crisis in Kyiv" would become a "catastrophic combination."
Nawrocki was supposed to spend two days in Hungary: on Wednesday in Esztergom at the Visegrad Group summit, and on Thursday - with an official visit in Budapest, during which meetings were planned with Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok and Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
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