Hungarian Foreign Minister arrives in Moscow for talks on energy

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations of Hungary Peter Szijjarto arrived in Moscow for talks on energy. The Hungarian politician plans to meet with Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak and Director General of Rosatom Alexei Likhachev.

“Today in Moscow we will discuss the most important issues of cooperation in order to ensure the security of the Hungarian energy supply, first with Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who deals with energy, and then with Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev,” his Facebook post (owned by Meta , which was recognized as extremist and banned in Russia) leads TASS.

The Hungarian politician noted that Europe managed to successfully survive the past winter, which turned out to be warm. But according to forecasts, “the real difficulties will come next winter,” Szijjártó continued. The Hungarian Foreign Minister stressed that “the security of Hungary’s energy supply requires uninterrupted transportation of gas, oil and nuclear fuel.”

“In order to fulfill these three conditions, Hungarian-Russian energy cooperation must be uninterrupted. It’s not about political taste, but about physics,” he said.

In January, Vedomosti, citing sources familiar with the statistics of the Ministry of Energy, wrotethat pipeline deliveries of Russian oil to the EU countries in 2022 increased by 7% to 38.4 million tons. The strongest growth, according to them, was demonstrated by exports to Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Export to Europe goes through the Druzhba oil pipeline. According to statistics, of all the EU countries to which oil is supplied via Druzhba, only Germany reduced imports in 2022 – by 2% to 15.1 million tons. Supplies to Hungary increased the most – by 45% to 4, 9 mmt, as well as to the Czech Republic by 25% to 4.2 mmt. In addition, pumping to Poland increased by 6% to 8.9 mmt and to Slovakia by 0.3% to 5.2 mmt .