Deutsch: Clear answers needed on ‘Ukraine’s new blackmail of Hungary’

Referring to reports of an alleged plan to blow up the Druzhba pipeline carrying Russian oil to Hungary, the head of the ruling party’s EP delegation said in a video statement that the “serious and outrageous case of extortion” must be clarified, adding that his group of MEPs had turned to the European Commission with written questions.

Deutsch referred to an alleged meeting in February in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may have suggested blowing up the pipeline as well as a message sent by the chief executive of Ukrtransnafta, the company that manages oil transportation operations through the Ukrainian pipeline network, setting Hungary conditions for keeping oil flowing through the pipeline. He also said he had received a message from “the Brussels bureaucracy” that the transit of crude oil to Hungary could well be stopped.

He noted that the pipeline is key to the oil supply of central Europe and Hungary.

The Fidesz MEP said Brussels had remained “silent on the matter”, adding that it was insupportable that no answer had been forthcoming about whether “the direct collaborators of European Commission leaders” had actually proposed to the Ukrainians the “grave act of threatening Hungary’s sovereignty” in order to exert political pressure.