L’UE corre per approvare i colloqui di adesione dell’Ucraina prima della presidenza del Consiglio ungherese

Its just approval for accession talks, not admittance to EU, that will still take years.

Is it correct to think that Hungary’s endgame was ultimately irredentism?
(It doesn’t seem like Prime Minister Orban is going anywhere, and his power base among the Hungarians seems rock solid, so not making a distinction here)

The “Western” media outside of Hungary always go for the word ‘authoritarian’ when they bring up Orban, and try to link him to Putin and others on a personal level. But the matter of “land” seems to be a better fit.

So, my speculation goes like this: When Russia started the full-scale war in 2022, Hungary perhaps DID want Russia to win swiftly and wanted to cut a deal with Putin so that Hungary could take over Zakarpattia, the lands to the west of the mountain range.

Similarly, assuming Russia would roll through Odesa all the way into Moldova (as was on Lukashenko’s ‘briefing board’) in a few weeks of 2022, and further launch into Romania, Hungary wanted to barge into the Hungarian-speaking basin of Romanian northwest in the midst of the guaranteed chaos.

That would have been similar to what Stalin did to Poland in 1939, which would culminate in the re-creation of ‘the greater Hungary’. Except the fact that the Ukrainians fought too well, and frustrated Hungary’s hidden ambition.

If anyone counters this speculation with ‘You have too wild an imagination, that’s insane’, you’re probably right. Still, I always try to track the motives behind why countries do what they do, and Hungary’s stance since 2022 (or even before) as a member of the EU AND NATO has seemed fundamentally too puzzling to be simply “leveraging” for concessions from the EU and narrow self-interest.