Overseas Minister Peter Szijjarto says Hungary ‘is not going to give in to this blackmail’ after oil flows from Ukraine halted.
Revealed On 20 Feb 2026
Hungary will block a 90 billion euro ($106bn) EU mortgage for Ukraine till it resumes oil shipments to the nation by way of the Druzhba pipeline, its overseas minister mentioned on Friday after Budapest mentioned it could faucet strategic reserves to deal with a scarcity.
Hungary and Slovakia, which have the one remaining refineries within the European Union utilizing Russian oil via Druzhba, have been attempting to safe provide since flows have been halted on January 27 following what Ukraine mentioned was a Russian drone assault that broken pipeline infrastructure.
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Each international locations have blamed Ukraine for the delay in restarting the flows for political causes. The information company Reuters requested feedback from the Ukrainian overseas ministry and the state oil and gasoline firm on Thursday.
“By blocking oil transit to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline, Ukraine violates the EU-Ukraine Affiliation Settlement, breaching its commitments to the European Union. We is not going to give in to this blackmail,” Overseas Minister Peter Szijjarto mentioned on X.
The Hungarian authorities mentioned in a decree late on Thursday that it could launch about 1.8 million barrels of crude oil from its strategic reserves to make up for shortfalls.
Croatia’s JANAF pipeline operator, nevertheless, mentioned on Friday there was no want for Budapest to take action after Hungary’s oil firm MOL mentioned JANAF should permit transit of the Russian seaborne oil throughout the Druzhba outage.
“At this second, a important amount of non-Russian crude oil is being transported by way of JANAF’s pipeline for MOL Group, whereas three extra tankers carrying non-Russian oil, additionally for MOL Group, are on their strategy to the Omisalj Terminal,” JANAF mentioned in a press release.
“There was no must faucet into [their] reserves since oil transport by way of the JANAF pipeline in direction of MOL’s refineries is being carried out constantly and with out delays.”
MOL is entitled to precedence entry to launched crude oil reserves, and it’ll have entry to the freed reserves till April 15 and has to return them by August 24, the Hungarian authorities decree mentioned.
On the finish of January, Hungary had sufficient crude oil and petroleum product reserves to cowl 96 days, based on information on the Hungarian Hydrocarbon Stockpiling Affiliation’s web site.
As the 2 international locations scramble to make sure provides, MOL ordered tankers delivering Saudi, Norwegian, Kazakh, Libyan and Russian oil to produce its Hungarian and Slovak refineries and halted diesel deliveries to Ukraine earlier this week.
MOL mentioned that the primary shipments have been anticipated to reach on the port of Omisalj in Croatia in early March. After that, it’ll take an extra 5-12 days for the crude oil to succeed in its refineries.
The Slovak authorities has additionally declared an oil emergency state of affairs and has pledged to launch 1.825 million barrels of oil following a request from Slovakia’s Slovnaft refinery, which is owned by MOL.