Prime Minister Viktor Orbán slammed the European Union’s sanctions against Russia, saying that Europe was paying a “sanctions surcharge” for energy. Hungary is “mostly successful” in avoiding the consequences of those bad decisions, he told public radio, “but we are on the same market as all other European countries, and Hungary suffers to some degree from the deteriorating situation there. That is why we are against the sanctions,” he said. Sanctions were originally introduced as a tool to end the war swiftly and to punish Russia for launching the war, he said. “We made a plan and dug a hole for the Russians, but ended up falling into it ourselves,” he said. “The EU is now proposing to dig further, while Hungary is saying we should try to get out.” Those two stances clash at every EU summit, he added.