Top Gun: The Orbán Government’s Position on the War in Ukraine Katalin Fábián, Lafayette College, US https://doi.org/10.5325/hungarianstud.49.2.0216 e February 24, 2022, Russian attack on Ukraine has created a new and dramatic fault line in European politics and international affairs. e war between Ukraine and Russia is the first interstate armed conflict on the European continent since World War II. e EU, NATO, and Western part- ners have pursued increasing sanctions against Russia to persuade it to abandon its unprovoked attack. Aſter nearly five months, many surprises have emerged: (1) e almighty Russian military could not speedily and entirely take over Ukraine as many had expected. e Ukrainian people and their military continue to show stiff resistance, so much so that a recent Russian joke noted: “We thought our army was number two in the world—now it is second in Ukraine.” (2) Sensing a geopolitical opportunity, the EU and NATO became stronger in their unity to deter Russian aggression. However, this unity is fractured, as Hungary has proven to be a main actor on behalf of Russia by, for ex- ample, preventing military equipment from passing through to Ukraine. 1 (3) Public support for Ukraine is waning in many places as inflation and gas prices climb incessantly, and some claim that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is correct in his disapproval of sanctions. 2 Hungary’s previously un- usual condition that the far Right and the Leſt both support Russia seems to be becoming less unique, with France’s Le Figaro publishing a similar argument on July 15, 2022. 3 e stakes are extremely high in this “game of chicken” where the young Ukrainian state fights for its survival and has become a proxy battleground between NATO and Russia. Notably, Russia has threatened to use weapons of mass destruction—the ultimate and irre- versible method of escalation—to gain supremacy in the conflict. As long as the conditions appear to be that what is one’s loss is another’s gain (a zero-sum game), the conflict continues, and only arms suppliers and auto- crats gain from the massacres and destruction. nloaded from http://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/hungarian-studies/article-pdf/49/2/216/1667327/hungarianstud.49.2.0216.pdf by lwaters@utep.edu on 20 December 2022