Russia's Putin visits Hungary in bid for support from EU member

Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a brief visit to Hungary on Tuesday as the European Union increased its sanctions against Moscow and a fragile cease-fire took shape in Ukraine.

The visit comes on the heels of yet another accord reached in Minsk last Thursday, with German Chancellor Merkel, French President Holland, Putin, and Ukraine's President Poroshenko in attendance, and new EU sanctions that took effect on Monday.

Russia has been hurt by the series of EU sanctions, the first of which are almost a year old.

At a news conference in Budapest on Tuesday evening Putin was asked about the ceasefire. He told his audience that a resolution is possible thanks to the Minsk document, adding that he was optimistic that the cease fire would hold.

Hungary's Orban weighed in favor the need to end the fighting. He pointed out that Hungary bordered on Ukraine and with 200,000 ethnic Hungarians living there, his country was committed to the peace process and called the ceasefire a good point of departure.

However, Orban reiterated his view that sanctions against Russia were not in anyone's best interests. Instead, it was in the interests of all of Europe to resolve the relationship between Russia and the European Union in a rational way.

"Isolating Russia from the EU is not rational," he said. While Hungary respected the sanctions, Orban said, they were damaging and what was really needed was economic cooperation. Peace, he said, is not an absence of conflict but the management of differences.

Both Orban and Putin focused on Hungary's energy needs. Putin said that 85 percent of Hungary's gas and 75 percent of its oil came from Russia. In earlier statements Orban had underlined Hungary's need to renew or extend a gas supply contract with Russia that was expiring this year. While no new contract was agreed on, Hungary was granted an extension of the previous one with additional negotiations promised for later this year.

On another energy issue, Russia's nuclear giant Rosatom indicated that it was following through on a contract signed last year to build two new nuclear reactors for Hungary. And - vital to that agreement - it was holding itself to a loan of about 10 billion euros (11.4 billion U.S. dollars) that many in Hungary feared it would renege on given Russia's precarious financial status triggered by falling energy prices and the EU sanctions. Putin called the contract "a very good deal" for Hungary.

Putin spoke at length on the defunct South Stream gas pipeline, blaming the EU for the project's failure. The joint venture established between Russian and Hungarian companies for South Stream could however continue to operate for the Turkish project Russia planned in lieu of South Stream, he said. Putin also said he had no objection to the pipeline extending from Turkey through Greece and/or Bulgaria as had been envisaged for the South Stream project. Enditem