BUDAPEST, March 3. /TASS/. Ukraine is continuing its oil blockade of Hungary to undermine the current government and help the opposition win the parliamentary elections on April 12, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said.
"The oil blockade by Ukraine is political blackmail by President Zelensky. He is doing this to help the Tisza party come to power," Orban wrote on his Facebook page (banned in Russia, owned by the Meta corporation, which is designated as extremist in Russia).
Orban was commenting on a statement by Zsolt Hernadi, head of the oil and gas company MOL, who confirmed that Kiev is blocking oil supplies from Russia solely for political reasons.
Speaking on ATV, Hernadi said that UkrTransNafta, which handles oil transit through Ukrainian territory, was ready to resume deliveries via the Druzhba pipeline but was unable to do so because it had not received permission from the country's leadership.
"They really wanted to restart the pipeline and repeatedly said it would happen in two or three days," the head of MOL explained. However, permission was never granted, and "it's hard to call it a technical problem," he said.
Hernadi reported that, according to his information, several weeks ago, a strike on Ukrainian territory caused a fire at an oil or fuel storage facility near the pipeline, but it was extinguished and its consequences were removed. As the head of MOL noted, "the pipeline itself was not damaged."
Earlier TASS sources in the oil industry also reported that the Ukrainian side had already eliminated the emergency situation related to the pipeline in early February, but permission to resume its operation has not been received.
Russian oil has not been flowing to Hungary since January 27. Budapest has already stated that the pipeline has been restored and that Kiev is blocking it for political reasons. In response, Hungary took retaliatory measures by ceasing to supply Ukraine with diesel fuel and refusing to allow the EU to provide it with a €90 billion "military loan.".