Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán plans to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin on 1 February to discuss the Russian-backed project to expand a Hungarian nuclear power plant, Hungary’s foreign minister said Thursday. The meeting comes as Nato, the US, and the EU try to manage the Russian military build-up at the Ukrainian border. The Paks nuclear plant’s €12bn expansion is covered by a €10bn loan from a Russian state bank.”
Hungary also plans cooperation with China on more railway projects. The Hungarian government, which already has cooperation with China on the project of a high speed rail link between Budapest and Belgrade (the Serbian capital), thinks of expanding the cooperation to link the Hungarian capital to other regional capitals: Budapest – Bratislava (Slovakia), Budapest – Prague (Czech Republic), Budapest – Warsaw (Poland) and Budapest – Cluj Napoca (also known as Kolozsvár, in Romania).
The Budapest – Belgrade route will be finished by 2025 and is financed by China, Hungary and Serbia. Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs said two days ago that “more and more Chinese commodities arrive in the Greek ports and need to be transported to Central and Western Europe. There is a sharp competition for providing a transit route for them.”
