BUDAPEST, September 9. /TASS/. The leadership of the European Union is using the Ukraine conflict to financially chain its member nations so that it can subjugate them and strip them of their sovereignty, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban believes.

"The Brusselian elite are pushing joint indebtedness to strip nations of their sovereignty and drag us toward a United States of Europe. They want to use the war in Ukraine as the pretext to shackle us all financially. We must look beyond the battlefield to the future of the Union itself: free nations or submission to unelected bureaucrats?" he wrote on the X social network.

The Hungarian Prime Minister noted that by doing this, the EU is making a last-ditch effort to preserve itself as currently formulated.

Earlier, Orban said that the EU bureaucratic center had ceased to play the role of coordinator of the bloc and has turned into a "Frankenstein pursuing its own interests."

He stressed that when the EU was created, it was agreed that power would be concentrated in the hands of individual nations, but now Brussels is trying to centralize that power. According to the politician, the leadership of the association is encroaching on the sovereignty of its participants, and failing to resolve any crises along the way.

Since the very beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, the Hungarian government has consistently advocated for its peaceful resolution and has called on its allies to resume dialogue with Russia. Hungary also refuses to support Ukraine's accelerated accession to the EU, warning that this would cause serious damage to the European economy and could lead to a direct military clash with Russia.