BUDAPEST — Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary has warned that the war in Ukraine could become an unwinnable and costly conflict for the European Union, comparing it to the United States’ decades-long war in Afghanistan.
In an interview with Politico, Orbán said that the EU has spent “hundreds of billions of euros” supporting Ukraine and cautioned that, without a resolution, the conflict could become a prolonged burden for European nations.
“If President [Donald] Trump is not able to find a solution, that war could easily become an Afghanistan for the European Union,” Orbán said, referring to the 20-year U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan.
“Endless war, endless conflict, no way out of the conflict—eating up energy, human lives, money, everything. Destroying the frame of normal life for the European Union. … We are in serious danger,” he added.
Orbán also reiterated a Kremlin-backed argument that Russia launched the invasion to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. He claimed that the battlefield situation currently favors Russia.
“The difficulty is … how to convince the Russians to stop the war while the Russians are basically winning,” he said.
The U.S.-led NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021 after 20 years of military operations, a departure that led to the collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban’s return to power.
