While Orbán reported that the aborted Ukraine peace summit in Budapest was still on the table and that the United States would provide a “financing shield” to offset funds withheld by Brussels, most significantly, he managed to secure a full exemption from U.S. sanctions related to Russian energy shipments through the TurkStream gas and the Druzhba oil pipelines, through which Hungary gets a majority of these resources.
Upon announcing the exemption, Orbán explained that it would enable his government to continue pursuing its scheme to reduce utility bills for Hungarians.
“Hungary will continue to have the lowest energy prices in Europe,” Orbán insisted. “We have prepared all the conditions necessary for this, and this specifically means we have got a total exemption from sanctions in respect of the TurkStream and the Druzhba pipelines,” he added. Any sanctions that could restrict supply or make energy imports more expensive for Hungary would not apply, he said. “This is a general exemption with no time limit,” Orbán added.
Trump said he granted the exemption to longtime supporter Orbán because “it’s very difficult for him to get the oil and gas from other areas.” Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó cited the relationship between the two leaders as the reason Hungarian families were spared a drastic rise in energy prices, emphasizing that without these exemptions, energy costs for households and businesses may have doubled or tripled.
While a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade quoted Szijjártó as saying that oil imports through the TurkStream and Druzhba pipelines would not face any restrictions in the future, a White House spokesperson told Reuters and the BBC that the exemption had actually only been granted for one year. In response, both Szijjártó and Orbán were emphatic that the period agreed upon had been indefinite.
“The prime minister was clear,” Szijjártó said in a post on his Facebook page. “He has agreed with the U.S. President that we have obtained an indefinite exemption from the sanctions,” the foreign minister said.
“I shook hands with President Donald Trump on Hungary’s exemption from U.S. oil sanctions for an indefinite period,” Orbán added in a post on his own Facebook page. “As long as he is president there and I am prime minister here, there will be no sanctions.”
Following these statements, a White House official reiterated in an email to Reuters that the exemption would be for one year, adding that Hungary had committed to buying U.S. liquefied natural gas, with contracts valued at some USD 600 million, as part of its efforts to diversify its energy sources.
Szijjártó said the five-year LNG deal would be for two billion cubic meters, 400 million bcm each year, alongside existing French and Dutch supplies.
“This is real energy security; not replacing one source under duress, but adding new ones,” he said.
Additional energy deals include an intergovernmental agreement on nuclear energy cooperation, which was extended to include nuclear fuel, the storage of spent fuel rods and small modular reactors. Hungarian energy provider MVM Group signed a contract with U.S.-based Westinghouse in which the latter will provide long-term, stable deliveries of VVER fuel for the Paks 2 nuclear power plant.
Regarding the development of Paks 2, Szijjártó said the ministry formally submitted exemption requests to the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
“Our current sanctions exemption for Paks 2 expires on Dec. 19, but the agreement removes this deadline, making the exemption permanent,” the foreign minister said. “This means the Paks 2 project faces no European or U.S. sanctions,” he added.
Following these announcements, Orbán pointed out that, despite the exemptions granted to Hungary by the United States, the European Union would still pursue its plan to ban Russian energy imports by 2027. While “the people in Brussels took prompt action,” in acknowledging Hungary’s exemption from U.S. measures, “nonetheless, they’ll ban the import of Russian energy sources into Europe from 2027 […]. We’ll have a few words about this.”
The European Commission will not be the only ones working towards this endeavor. Upon hearing the news that America would exempt Hungary from sanctions on Russian energy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, “We will still find a way to prevent Russian oil from entering Europe. Russia must lose from the war, and its greatest losses are when it cannot trade energy resources.”
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of November 14, 2025.
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