BUDAPEST, October 17. /TASS/. Hungary intends to maintain cooperation with Russia in any and all areas that can be salvaged from the EU’s sanctions, the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations Peter Szijjarto said after talks in Beijing between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"In Hungarian-Russian cooperation we need to preserve everything that can be salvaged from the sanctions, especially in the field of energy and the economy," Szijjarto wrote on his Facebook page (banned in Russia, owned by the Meta corporation, recognized as extremist in the Russian Federation).

Szijjarto illustrated his post with a photo of negotiations between the leaders of the two countries. He attended a meeting between Orban and Putin, who are in Beijing to participate in the One Belt, One Road international forum.

Head of Victor Orban’s press department Bertalan Havasi said that Orban and Putin discussed Hungarian-Russian cooperation on gas, oil and nuclear energy. At the meeting, the beginning of which was broadcast on television, Orban confirmed that Hungary intends to continue cooperation with Russia in the energy sphere, called the state corporation Rosatom a reliable partner and thanked Gazprom for fulfilling long-term contracts.

Hungary continues to receive Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline, and gas through the TurkStream and its branches through Bulgaria and Serbia. The Paks nuclear power plant, which uses Russian nuclear fuel, generates half of all the electricity in the country. Largely thanks to the efforts of the Hungarian government, oil supplies along the southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline, gas transportation via the TurkStream and nuclear energy were not affected by the sanctions the EU imposed against Russia due to the conflict in Ukraine.