Democratic Security
Interview
Russia Has Learned That Chaos Is Cheaper Than War – INTERVIEW
9 October 2026
Hungary refused to join Ukraine’s Carpathian Eight and rejected a MOL-Naftogaz fuel storage plan. Is the thaw coming to an end? Here is what we know so far from the media.
János Széky, a Hungarian journalist and translator, described Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s recent Ukraine policy as being ‘determined by the same version of ethno-nationalism that prevailed in the horrific propaganda before April 12’. In Széky’s view, while former PM Viktor Orbán used Ukraine as a scaremongering ideological trope, his successor ‘honestly believes in it, period’.
So what set off such a reaction?
Hungary’s phantom membership in Kyiv’s new initiative
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy opened the first Carpathian Eight (C8) summit in Bukovel, western Ukraine, on 18 September 2026. Zelenskyy wrote that it was the first summit bringing together all states of the Carpathian region to be held in Ukraine. He described the C8 as a movement connecting its members more closely, aimed at expanding security, energy, logistics and cross-border economic cooperation and at supporting local communities.
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