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But this is not the first time he has given up on matters involving Russian oil and gas.
Eight months after the inauguration for his second term, Donald Trump has still not been able to achieve what he had first promised back in 2023: that he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. Several rounds of discussions with both sides have not brought peace any closer.
Then, on Sep. 13, Trump posted a message that surprised many. NATO member states, he stated, must stop buying energy from Russia, as this is what keeps the Russian war machine rolling.
“As you know, NATO’s commitment to WIN has been far less than 100%, and the purchase of Russian Oil, by some, has been shocking! It greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia,” Trump wrote on his platform, Truth Social.
Some critics wondered why he would make this statement now, and not on the very first day of his inauguration. The question is even more valid looking at Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, when he threatened in much harsher terms to force European states to stop buying Russian energy, but nothing happened.
Initially, Trump did not mention Russia directly. During a visit to Warsaw in July 2017, he said: “We are committed to securing your access to alternate sources of energy, so Poland and its neighbors are never again held hostage to a single supplier of energy.”
He did, however, warn Russia on other issues: “We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes including Syria and Iran, and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.” It was an invitation largely ignored by the Kremlin.
The U.S. president’s call for European countries to diversify their sources of oil and gas was also not heeded. The German Federal Government, then led by Angela Merkel, continued with the Nord Stream II project, an USD 11 billion pipeline designed to transport gas from Russia to Germany via Denmark, bypassing Ukraine.
This infuriated Trump, and he even gained the support of the U.S. House and Senate to impose sanctions on companies involved in the construction of the Nord Stream II pipeline. European politicians reacted angrily, with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas stating: “European energy policy is decided in Europe, not in the U.S. We reject external interference.”
Hungary was also a weak link in the Trump administration’s efforts to distance Europe from Russian energy. But here, the U.S. employed a softer approach. In November 2018, U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry met with Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó.
At the press conference after the meeting in Budapest, Perry emphasized that Washington opposed “both the Nord Stream II and the multi-line Turkish Stream natural gas pipelines, both of which would extend and deepen Russia’s energy dominance in the region.”
In a discussion earlier that year in Brussels with then NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump was more outspoken: “If you look at it, Germany is a captive of Russia. They got rid of their coal plants, they got rid of their nuclear, they’re getting so much of their oil and gas from Russia. I think it is something NATO has to look at. It is very inappropriate.”
Trump lost the presidential election in 2020, and Chancellor Merkel managed to convince President Biden to greenlight Nord Stream II. That raised an obvious question: Did this mean that Germany and the United States accepted that Russian energy was irreplaceable and could serve as leverage for the Kremlin?
Something needed to be said, and this manifested in the form of a joint statement: “Should Russia attempt to use energy as a weapon or commit further aggressive acts against Ukraine, Germany will take action at the national level and press for effective measures at the European level, including sanctions, to limit Russian export capabilities to Europe in the energy sector, including gas, and/or in other economically relevant sectors. This commitment is designed to ensure that Russia will not misuse any pipeline, including Nord Stream 2, to achieve aggressive political ends by using energy as a weapon.” Less than one year later, Russia launched its military operation against Ukraine.
This, then, was the context in which Donald Trump’s call to NATO member states arrived on Sep. 13. The question was: what would the Hungarian government do? Continuing to purchase Russian oil and gas not only meant openly defying Donald Trump (a leader whom Prime Minister Orbán has supported for many years, including the four-year period from 2021-2024 when the American was out of office), but also meant going against its own policy.
The Hungarian government has long claimed that it is the only European player seriously promoting peace in Ukraine. Now that Trump has shown the path, rejecting it would mean denying its own foreign policy. A real dilemma, bluntly resolved by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Péter Szijjártó, 10 days later. Speaking to the U.K. daily newspaper The Guardian, he said it was a matter of physics for Hungary to purchase energy from Russia. That is the only infrastructure available, he explained. The Trump administration accepted the argument.
Not everyone agrees. The Croatian Minister for the Economy, Ante Šušnjar, said on Sep. 26 that Croatia is able to ship 15 million cubic meters of oil to Hungary and Slovakia via the Adriatic pipeline, and he invited Szijjártó to test the pipeline’s capacity together.
The next day, the Hungarian minister responded on social media: “No matter how the Croatian government is denying it, they want to profit from the war in Ukraine. Since the start of the war, they have raised significantly the fees for oil transit, and now they want to hamper buying oil from Russia so that they position themselves in a monopolistic situation and make more money […] from us.” Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković rejected the allegations.
Janaf, the company operating the Adriatic pipeline, also rejected the Hungarian claim that the pipeline is unable to carry sufficient oil to Hungary and Slovakia. It detailed the results of three tests conducted with the Hungarian oil company MOL, stating that during the third test, carried out between Sep. 22-24, flows were reduced at MOL’s request. “The only reason for the decreased flow was the direct demand by MOL Group, and there were no obstacles on Janaf’s part to achieving the planned flow,” the company said.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of October 3, 2025.
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