By Christian Edwards, CNN

(CNN) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow Friday to shore up Hungary’s energy supplies and discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

Having spurned chances to reduce its dependence on Russian fossil fuels, Hungary was facing a violent economic shock after the Trump administration last month imposed sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil producers. Before the sanctions were announced, Orbán had warned that, without energy imports from Russia, Hungary’s economy would be brought “to its knees.”

But Orbán, a hard-right populist and a darling of the MAGA movement, was spared that shock after US President Donald Trump granted Hungary a one-year exemption from the sanctions, saying it had been “difficult” for his ally to wean the country off Russian oil since it is landlocked.

“We recently travelled to Washington to secure Hungary’s exemption from the American sanctions on Russian energy: we succeeded. Now we must take the next step, guaranteeing that deliveries to Hungary continue without interruption,” Orbán wrote on social media Friday.

“This is why I am going to Russia today: to make sure Hungary’s energy supply remains secure and affordable this winter and in the year ahead,” he added.

Although Trump, explaining why he was considering granting Hungary an exemption, said it had been “very difficult for him (Orbán) to get the oil and gas from other areas” since “they don’t have ports,” analysts have disputed this reasoning.

After Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, European Union countries moved to slash Russian energy imports in a bid to deplete the Kremlin’s war chest. However, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic – three Central European nations – were given an exemption from a ban on importing Russian crude oil, giving them time to reduce their reliance on Moscow.

While the Czech Republic has since phased out Russian crude oil, Hungary and Slovakia used the exemption to deepen their dependence. Russian crude oil made up 86% of all Hungarian purchases of crude in 2024, up from 61% pre-invasion. So far this year, 92% of Hungary’s crude oil imports have been from Russia.

Slovakia, meanwhile, is “almost 100% dependent” on supply from Moscow, according to a report in May from the Center for the Study of Democracy and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Isaac Levi, an analyst at CREA, told CNN earlier this month that the latest US exemption is a “terrible and unnecessary mistake that will allow over €1 billion ($1.2 billion) to flow into the Kremlin’s war chest.”

He said the Trump administration’s rationale for the exemption was not credible, since the Czech Republic, another landlocked country, no longer imports Russian crude oil and has lower fuel prices at the pump than Hungary. “This clearly shows that the oil flows that continue to finance Putin’s war in Ukraine are entirely unnecessary,” Levi said.

During Friday’s meeting in Moscow, Orbán and Putin also discussed recent US-led efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Putin did not rule out Friday the possibility of a summit in Budapest with Trump, Russian state media reported.

Putin and Trump had agreed in October to meet in the Hungarian capital to discuss ending the conflict, but those plans were swiftly shelved, with Trump saying he did not want the talks to be a waste of time.

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