Pakistan among world’s future big powers, says Hungarian PM

BUDAPEST (Reuters); Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday that Pakistan along with China, India, and Indonesia will become the future global powers.

”In the next long decades, maybe centuries, Asia will be the dominant center of the world,” Orban said, mentioning China, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia as the world’s future big powers.

Furthermore, the Hungarian Prime Minister added Russia’s leadership was “hyper-rational” and that Ukraine would never be able to fulfill its hopes of becoming a member of the European Union or NATO.

Orban, a nationalist in power since 2010, made the comments during a speech in which he forecast a shift in global power away from the “irrational” West towards Asia and Russia.

“And we Westerners pushed the Russians into this bloc as well,” he said in the televised speech before ethnic Hungarians at a festival in the town of Baile Tusnad in neighboring Romania.

Orban, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, has sharply differed from the rest of the bloc by seeking warmer ties with Beijing and Moscow, and he angered some EU leaders when he went on surprise visits to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing this month for talks on the war in Ukraine.

He said that in contrast to the “weakness” of the West, Russia’s position in world affairs was rational and predictable, saying the country had shown economic flexibility in adapting to Western sanctions since it invaded Crimea in 2014.

Orban, whose own government has passed several anti-LGBT measures, said Russia had gained clout in many parts of the world by cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights. “The strongest international appeal of Russian soft power is its opposition to LGBTQ,” he said.

He added that Ukraine would never become a member of the EU or NATO because “we Europeans do not have enough money for that”. “The EU needs to give up its identity as a political project and become an economic and defence project,” Orban added.

The EU opened membership talks with Ukraine late last month, although a long and tough road lies ahead of the country before it can join the bloc. A declaration at the end of the NATO summit this month said the alliance will support Ukraine on “its irreversible path” towards membership.