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Hungary will gradually halt gas exports to Ukraine until Kyiv resumes oil shipments through the Druzhba pipeline.
The move was announced on Wednesday by the country’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who added that the gas would be redirected to refill the country’s own storage instead of being supplied to Ukraine.
“We will gradually stop gas supplies from Hungary to Ukraine, and we will store the remaining gas at home,” Orbán said in a social media video posted after a cabinet meeting.”As long as Ukraine does not supply oil, we will not supply gas from Hungary.”
Orbán’s announcement comes as Hungary and Ukraine are locked in a dispute over the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline, which carries Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. The pipeline was damaged in a Russian strike in late February and has not been repaired since.
Both Hungary and Slovakia accuse Ukraine —which has said repairs could take up to six weeks— of using the issue for political gain.
Orbán’s government has repeatedly alleged that Ukraine is trying to trigger an energy crisis ahead of Hungary’s April 12 general election in an effort to undermine his administration.
He argued in the video that Hungary also needed to build up its own natural gas reserves following Ukrainian attacks on the Russia-based TurkStream pipeline, which carries Russian natural gas via Turkey to Hungary.
The dispute over the Druzhba pipeline has stalled the disbursement of the EU’s €90bn aid package to Ukraine, which Hungary is blocking.
The European Commission has offered technical and financial assistance to help Ukraine assess and repair the damage, though it has yet to confirm whether its team of experts has gained access to the site.
Ukraine has repeatedly called on Hungary and Slovakia to decouple from Russian fossil fuels. Both countries import a large amount of oil and gas from Russia.
Ukraine’s energy analytics company ExPro reported that the Hungarian route is among the country’s primary natural gas import corridors.
According to its estimates, Ukraine imported over 2.9 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Hungary in 2025, accounting for 45 percent of the nation’s total imports.