By Humeyra Pamuk and Alan Charlish
BUDAPEST, April 8 (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday that Ukraine’s president had made “scandalous” comments about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as he echoed Budapest’s accusations that Kyiv was using energy supplies to try to influence elections there.
Vance’s remarks came during a visit to Budapest aimed at boosting the chances of the nationalist Orban, who faces the toughest challenge of his 16-year rule in an April 12 election seen as crucial for the influence of supporters of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement in Europe.
Hungary’s strained relations with Ukraine have taken centre stage in the election campaign, with Budapest accusing Kyiv of deliberately stopping flows of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline in an effort to sway the ballot.
Kyiv says the pipeline was damaged by a Russian drone attack in late January and it is fixing it as fast as it can.
Hungary responded by blocking a 90-billion-euro ($105 billion) EU loan for Ukraine, prompting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to say he could give the address of whoever was responsible to the Ukrainian army, who could “speak with him in their own language”.
ACCUSATIONS OF ELECTION MEDDLING
Speaking at a Hungarian university, Vance said Orban had told him about Zelenskiy’s remarks.
“It’s completely scandalous,” Vance said. “You should never have a foreign head of government… threatening the head of government of an allied nation.”
Vance then accused the media of double standards in their coverage of alleged foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and in the Hungarian vote.
“You saw this back in 2016 where a lot of the American media said that it was a true scandal that the Russian government bought like $500,000 of Facebook advertisements…That’s foreign influence,” he said.
“But what’s not foreign influence is when the European Union threatens billions of dollars withheld from Hungary because you guys protect your borders…What’s not foreign influence is when the Ukrainians shut down pipelines, causing suffering among the Hungarian people in an effort to influence an election.”
Budapest has been embroiled in a long‑running dispute with the European Union over issues ranging from judicial independence to the treatment of migrants.
Vance had already lambasted what he said was EU meddling in the Hungarian vote at a news conference on Tuesday. A European Commission spokesperson said on Wednesday Brussels would use diplomatic channels “to convey our concerns to our U.S. counterparts” following those comments.
The Ukrainian presidency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
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(Reporting by Humerya Pamuk in Budapest, additional reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Dan Flynn in Kyiv, Lili Bayer in Budapest; Writing by Alan Charlish; Editing by Ros Russell and Toby Chopra)
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