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Budapest, Hungary | Xinhua | The European Union (EU) has already announced five rounds of sanctions against Russia, including an import ban on Russian coal. But according to Hungarian political scientist Csaba Moldicz, the sanctions will most likely not reach the desired effect of ending the current conflict in Ukraine.
In an exclusive interview with Xinhua recently, Moldicz, research director at the Eurasian Center of the John Neumann University in Budapest, explained that sanctions alone do not help unless they are accompanied by negotiations.
The conflict is still going on and Russia still has room for maneuver, even if more EU sanctions are imposed, said Moldicz.
“Evidently, only part of the world has levied sanctions on the Russian economy, while another part is not involved in that. Accordingly, Russia can use this opportunity to sell energy to other places,” he said.
Following the west’s imposition of sanctions on Russia, Moscow has started to explore new markets for its exports and ways to ensure its economic stability. India has reportedly bought at least 13 million barrels of crude oil from Russia since Feb. 24, compared with nearly 16 million barrels in the entire year of 2021. In early March, the value of the ruble, the Russian Federation’s currency, reached a low point, but since then it has staged a dramatic recovery to near pre-conflict levels.
“At the end of the day, negotiations are more effective than sanctions,” Moldicz said.
And the sanctions have had repercussions within Europe. Record-high inflation driven mainly by high energy prices is weighing on people’s living standards and has fueled concerns about the region’s overall economic development. Several European countries are heavily dependent on Russian energy, among them Germany and Hungary, and they oppose further sanctions on Russian oil and gas imports.
According to Moldicz, expecting a country like Hungary to cut Russian energy imports in a short period of time is beyond feasibility.
“We have to understand that back in the 1980s the heating systems of households in Hungary were switched to natural gas,” Moldicz said. “We still use wood and coal, but we rely heavily on gas. Hungary depends on Russian supplies for some 85 percent of its gas consumption.”
“So, even if it wanted to, the country cannot switch its entire system to an alternative fuel in a day or two. It’s not only about political will, it is also a question of technical and physical feasibility,” he said.
The government of Hungary believes that the proposed sanctions on oil and gas imports from Russia would impose a disproportionate and unbearable burden on the Hungarian people, which would hit Hungary itself harder than Russia.
Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said recently that the country’s energy security was a “red line.” Budapest will vote against a proposal for an embargo on oil and gas imports from Russia, he said.
Moldicz also explained that the proposed sanctions could lead to a food crisis in eastern Europe and in other parts of the world.
“Ukraine and Russia are both major exporters of wheat. Halting these exports would drive wheat and other grain prices higher, which in turn would hit low-income households the hardest, especially in Africa, Asia and also eastern Europe,” he said.
The concerns raised by Moldicz appear to be justified. In March 2022, the Food Price Index of the United Nations’ (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hit its highest level since 1990. On April 14, the UN released 100 million U.S. dollars for hunger hot spots in six African countries and in Yemen to mitigate the spillover effects of the Ukraine conflict. ■
