Hungary's supply of Russian crude oil is not affected by recent Ukrainian hit at the Druzhba pipeline

HUNGARY - In Brief 03 Dec 2025 by Istvan Racz
On December 1, Ukraine hit the Druzhba oil pipeline system once again, causing an explosion and another break in the continuity of oil shipments. Subsequently, reports like the following one have appeared in the media:However, this does not appear to be correct. As widely known, Druzhba indeed transports lots of crude oil to Hungary and Slovakia, but the above-mentioned attack affected a different section of its network. This incident happened between Lipeck, south of Moscow, roughly in the Oriol-Tambov-Voronyezh triangle, and Taganrog, which is just next to Rostov na Donu, right at the North-Eastern corner of the Azov Sea.We are completely sure that none of our Readers believe that Hungary imports crude oil from Russia through the Azov Sea, given its almost straight link that runs through the South-Western part of Russia and through Ukraine, straight to North-Eastern Hungary. It is no surprise that according to Hungarian MOL's report, cited by PM Orbán most lately, crude oil still arrives at Hungary in a continuous flow through the appropriate branch of the Druzhba pipeline.To Reuters' and others' credit, it may be somewhat misleading that Hungary's foreign minister reacted to the event by calling Ukraine to immediately give up endangering his country's energy security. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Szijjártó does this routinely whenever anything happens that might even indirectly lead to problems with Russian energy imports.For sure, anyone might say that fine for now, but Ukraine may hit the 'wrong' section of Druzhba at any time, especially now that they are spectacularly after Russian shadow fleet tankers on the Black Sea, and they are openly promising to con...

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