Ukraine could become EU’s ‘Afghanistan’: Hungarian PM

The war in Ukraine could turn into the European Union’s “Afghanistan,” a grinding and costly engagement with “no way out,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed on Friday.

Speaking to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at a media event in Dubai, Orbán noted the hundreds of billions of euros in aid the EU has spent helping Ukraine resist Russia’s full-scale invasion, which Moscow launched three years ago this month, Politico reported.

“If President [Donald] Trump is not able to find a solution, that war could become easily an Afghanistan for the European Union,” Orbán said, referring to the United States’ 20-year war in the Central Asian country.

Beginning in 2001 immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks and ending in 2021 with the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops, the war in Afghanistan remains the longest American war in history.

“Endless war, endless conflict, no way out of the conflict, eating up energy, human lives, money, everything,” Orbán said, continuing with his comparison. “Destroying the frame of normal life for the European Union. … We are in serious danger.”

Orbán, who is one of the few European leaders to remain friendly with Putin, repeated Kremlin talking points that Russia invaded Ukraine in a bid to stop it from joining NATO.