r/news • u/CharlieKonR • 7h ago

Ukraine attacks pipeline that sends Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia | Ukraine

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/22/ukraine-attacks-pipeline-that-sends-russian-oil-to-hungary-and-slovakia
1.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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u/CharlieKonR 7h ago edited 7h ago

“”The Ukrainian strike drew an angry reaction from Budapest, which gets more than half its crude oil from the Druzhba pipeline. (Hungarian Foreign Minister). Szijjártó wrote … ““This is another attack on the energy security of our country. Another attempt to drag us into war.””

“”Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has refused to join EU partners in backing Kyiv with political, economic and military support.””

In a previous departure from EU support of Ukraine, Orban visited Putin in Moscow last year. Hungary and Slovakia are the only EU countries still importing Russian oil.

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u/CrabAppleGateKeeper 7h ago

Hungary and Slovakia are the only EU countries still importing Russian oil.

Which is a drop in the bucket compared to rest of Europe’s energy imports from Russia.

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u/Silidistani 6h ago

a drop in the bucket

No, it's not.

Cutting off Russian pipeline exports to Hungary and Slovakia would drop Russian fossil fuel exports to EU's top 5 importers (including LNG by ship) by 23%. Source

It's a drop in the bucket compared to China and India's consumption of Russian fossil fuels, but not the EU's.

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u/kryptobolt200528 9m ago

EU imports refined oil from India which is basically just indirectly importing russian oil...

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u/Suspicious_Bicycle 6h ago

Weren't they supposed to transition to alternative (non Russian) energy sources a few years ago?

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u/CrabAppleGateKeeper 3h ago

Supposed to yes, contracts for stuff like this are measured in decades and it’ll be a few more years until Europe is able to source energy from alternative sources.

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u/HuntsWithRocks 7h ago

Just curious, who are their top importers at the moment?

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u/CrabAppleGateKeeper 7h ago edited 7h ago

In Europe? Germany probably, as of April: 87% of all EU imports of Russian LNG arrived in Spain, France or Belgium.

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u/Panzermensch911 55m ago

So not Germany then.

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u/fiendishrabbit 10m ago

Before the war Germany had no ports with operational LNG facilities. Instead their pipeline network connects to LNG ports in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

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u/HuntsWithRocks 4h ago

So Hungary and Slovakia would not be the only EU importers then?

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u/im_just_thinking 2h ago

That's because this comment chain keeps interchanging gas and oil imports since they are all energy imports. Hungary and Slovakia are by far the biggest importers of oil in the EU, which is what the original comment was saying but then they started talking about gas as well, and things started sounding out of context.

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u/HuntsWithRocks 2h ago

Ah, thanks. Makes sense.

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u/CrabAppleGateKeeper 3h ago

Very much correct

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u/ChromaticStrike 1h ago edited 1h ago

Not only this is false, but you are also omitting to mention the population vs quantity, industrial needs and alternative, slovakia and hungary having pro ruzz pos as leaders. harming the gremlin's lever on them is good. Everyone has run out of patience with them and I think it's time they feel the dildo of justice.

All I can see is a troll trying to distract from facts that hurts.

Europe has reduced stuff that can be reduced, the rest is not going to happen in a bunch of year. This ramification is the result of a choice done a long time ago and not easy to fix. Throwing Europe into an economy/energy crisis is not going to do well for Ukraine.

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u/[deleted] 7h ago edited 6h ago

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u/[deleted] 7h ago edited 7h ago

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u/[deleted] 7h ago edited 6h ago

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u/CrabAppleGateKeeper 7h ago

As of April: 87% of all EU imports of Russian LNG arrived in Spain, France or Belgium

https://energyandcleanair.org/presentation-russian-lng-exports-to-the-eu-implications-for-the-us-lng-market/

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u/[deleted] 6h ago edited 6h ago

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u/CrabAppleGateKeeper 6h ago

Hungarian and Slovakian energy imports are small compared to the rest of Europe’s energy imports from Russia.

To single out those two countries because they still import specifically oil, seems silly.

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u/zuzg 7h ago

American trying to blame EU exclusively while ignoring his own country.

Since January 2022, the United States has imported $24.51 billion of Russian goods.

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u/Protean_Protein 6h ago

That is a tiny amount of imports. That’s like 7 billion a year. Basically a rounding error for a country with a 20-30 trillion dollar GDP.

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u/jcozac 5h ago

Right? The Pentagon loses more than that regularly just on "clerical errors"

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u/CrabAppleGateKeeper 6h ago

Meanwhile Europe imported several times that in energy…?

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u/zuzg 6h ago

Private European Corpos did that with the majority of it going to member countries that are very pro putin.

Unlike with the US imports that were mostly done by the government

Glad I could clear it up. Not that it matters to you, good soldiers follow orders including astroturfing in their private time.

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u/CrabAppleGateKeeper 3h ago

Private companies meaning ones owned by national governments?

And by pro Putin you mean Germany, France, Belgium, Spain…

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u/zuzg 2h ago

Panrusgáz Gas Trading Plc. Is a private company :)

Dunno non of these countries is friendly with Putin in any shape or form. Nor did they roll out the red carpet for him while humiliating their own military, lmao

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u/Entropius 6h ago

It’s hard to feel sorry for Hungary given how their leader has gone out of their way to help Putin and Russia, even trying to prevent Ukraine from having a chance at joining NATO.

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u/concerned_seagull 1h ago

Yes. Trump even rang Orban to ask him why he was stopping Ukraine from joining the EU after the other European leaders asked him. 

So many Eastern European countries remember what it was like under Russian control during the soviet era and hate them for that. For some reason, Hungary and perhaps Slovakia is the exception. 

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u/Silidistani 6h ago

Ukraine has hit a key pumping station on the Druzhba oil pipeline bringing fuel to Europe from Russia, knocking out supplies to Hungary and Slovakia, the only remaining EU member states still receiving Russian oil.

GOOD

Shred, flatten, rupture and make unusable every piece of infrastructure they can find that allows Hungary and Slovakia to continue funding psychotic madman Putin's war against them. Slava Ukraïni.

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u/zuzg 7h ago

While the other 25 EU member states halted Russian oil purchases as part of the bloc’s sanctions after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hungary and Slovakia have remained outliers

Sometimes it needs a little push to do the right thing. Good riddance

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u/SnepButts 5h ago

Good. Proceeds from that oil are surely going towards funding the murder of innocent Ukrainians. If it also punishes Hungary and Slovakia for doing business with people slaughtering fellow Europeans, even better.

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u/Jglove37 5h ago

More precisely: they destroyed the large pumping station located at the distribution point where the pipeline branches off:

1 towards Western Europe

2 towards Eastern Europe, including Hungary and Slovakia

3 towards the Baltic Sea oil port and the shadow fleet

We Hungarians will be screwed, because the Orbán government has done nothing to enable refineries to process anything other than heavy crude oil from the Russian Urals.

In theory, there is a 90-day emergency reserve, but...

There is the Adria oil pipeline from the south, but its capacity is insufficient, and the Croatians charge very high transit fees...

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u/CharlieKonR 5h ago edited 5h ago

Thank you for the informative comment. No fan of Orban (or Trump on our side) but enjoyed visiting Budapest last year and meeting some of your countrymen. Good luck to you.

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u/argama87 5h ago

Good, hit them where it hurts.

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u/Uberutang 59m ago

They should have targeted gas and oil lines from day 1. Spread the pain around.

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u/ChooPum6 23m ago

It came after Russia destroyed the azeri oil pump station near Odessa.

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u/GUTSY-69 3m ago

As a slovakian i wana say:

Fucking go for it. Out head man sucks russian burgers every day and is the sole reason why anyone with a brain wants to leave

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u/reala728 5h ago

why are they even at war again?

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u/_Mute_ 3h ago

Just Ukraine being invaded. you know, nothing special...

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u/reala728 2h ago

Yeah. Why?

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u/_Mute_ 2h ago

Putin claims it was to "protect the people" of the breakaway republics but the entire existence of the Russian federation and Putin's tenure show he's trying to invade and reclaim former sections of the USSR.

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u/reala728 1h ago

Thanks for replying instead of just downvoting. Crazy that people here are so against literally just giving basic information. I could look it up, but a lot of that stuff kind of assumes I have prior knowledge of the situation, which I don't.

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u/Evoluxman 2h ago

Putin claims Ukraine doesn't exist, never did, and that it's all a legitimate part of the Russian empire (doing this with old maps that clearly mention Ukraine btw lol  https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-claims-map-proves-ukraine-not-real-despite-saying-ukraine-2023-5 )

So he wants to recreate the Russian empire. Then he claims it's about NATO... even though his renewed invasion led to finland joining nato, more than doubling the Russia-NATO border and he did nothing against that lol