Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said that oil supplies to his country from Russia via the Druzhba pipeline, damaged earlier by a Ukrainian strike, have resumed.
“Oil supplies to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline have resumed after Ukraine’s attack two days ago… We expect that Ukraine will no longer strike this vital pipeline. This is not our war. Hungary should be out of it,” Szijjártó wrote on social network X late in the evening of 19 August, thanking the Russian side for the “quick repairs”.
Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s unmanned systems force, said on 18 August that the strike on the Nikolskoye oil pumping station in Russia’s Tambov region had indefinitely halted the operation of the Druzhba oil pipeline, which supplies Russian oil through Ukraine to Slovakia and Hungary.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto accused Ukraine of “attacking the energy security” of his country. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga responded to his colleague by reminding him that Hungary had systematically made efforts over the years to maintain its energy dependence on Russia, despite long reservations that Moscow was not a reliable partner.
The European Commission said that it did not have sufficient information about the attack on the Druzhba pipeline, which supplies oil to Hungary and Slovakia, but did not see it as a risk to the EU’s energy supply.