U.S. Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the Ukrainian president had made "outrageous" comments about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and echoed Budapest’s accusations that Kyiv was using oil shipments in an attempt to influence the Hungarian elections, Reuters reports.

Vance made these remarks during his visit to Budapest, aimed at boosting the chances of nationalist Viktor Orban, who faces his toughest challenge in his 16 years in power in the elections scheduled for April 12, which are considered crucial for the influence of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement supporters in Europe.

Hungary’s tense relations with Ukraine have taken center stage in the Hungarian election campaign, with Budapest accusing Kyiv of deliberately halting the flow of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline in an attempt to influence the vote.

Kyiv maintains that the Druzhba pipeline was damaged on the Ukrainian section by a Russian attack, and repairs will take time. Nevertheless, Hungary blocked a 90-billion-euro ($105 billion) EU loan for Ukraine, prompting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to declare that he might provide the address of the person responsible for blocking the loan to the Ukrainian military, who could “speak to him in his own language.”

Zelensky made this remark, considered ill-advised, on March 5 during a press conference in Kyiv, when he explained that the delay in European aid to Ukraine was due to the position of “a single EU representative,” without naming Prime Minister Orbán. He said that blocking the funding could affect the supply of weapons needed by the Ukrainian army, which was struggling at the time to cope with Russia’s spring offensive.

In a speech delivered Wednesday at a university in Hungary, Vance stated that Orban had told him about Zelensky’s remarks.

"It is absolutely outrageous," Vance said. "A foreign head of government should never… threaten the head of government of an allied nation."

Vance then accused the media of double standards in its coverage of alleged foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Hungarian election campaign.

"You saw this as far back as 2016, when much of the American media said it was downright scandalous that the Russian government had purchased about $500,000 worth of ads on Facebook… That’s foreign influence," the media wrote at the time, he said.

"But isn’t it foreign influence when the European Union threatens to withhold billions of dollars in aid to Hungary because it is protecting its borders? Isn’t it foreign influence when Ukrainians shut off the pipelines, causing suffering to the Hungarian people in an attempt to influence the elections?" JD Vance asked rhetorically.

Budapest has long been at odds with the European Union over issues ranging from judicial independence to the treatment of migrants.

Neither the Ukrainian presidency nor the European Commission has yet responded to requests for comment from Reuters.

In fact, on the very first day of his visit to Budapest on Tuesday, the U.S. vice president had accused European Union “bureaucrats” of interfering in Hungary’s parliamentary elections, on the grounds that—according to him—Viktor Orbán “is not to their liking.”

"What has happened in this country is the worst example of foreign interference I have ever heard or read about," Vance said at a press conference following his meeting with the Hungarian prime minister.

According to the U.S. vice president, "the interference by bureaucrats in Brussels is shameful" and stems from the fact that they "do not like Hungary’s elected leader."

The German government took a stand and publicly rejected these accusations made by JD Vance against the European Union on Wednesday, notes EFE.

"We reject Vice President Vance’s accusations," said German government deputy spokesperson Sebastian Hille at a press conference in Berlin, when asked about the American politician’s comments regarding the EU and Hungary, where parliamentary elections will take place on Sunday.

Vance is making these statements in Hungary just days before the elections, “and this simple fact speaks for itself about who is meddling and in what.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has no preferences regarding the election currently underway in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is seeking a fifth consecutive term as head of the Hungarian government, the same spokesperson said.

In general, “the Federal Chancellor has no preference regarding the outcome of democratic elections in European Union member states, but accepts the results as voted by the citizens of each member state,” Hille emphasized.

Four days before the election, the Hungarian opposition party Tisza, led by conservative Peter Magyar, leads in the main polls regarding voting intentions, with a clear advantage.

A poll from last week credits the Tisza party with 56% of the vote, 19 points more than the percentage attributed to Orban’s ruling Fidesz party. AGERPRES/(AS-editor: Lilia Traci)

AGERPRES