Hungarian PM Orban Says Asia Will Become Center of World, Calls China, Indonesia Influential Powers

JAKARTA - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban Asia will become the dominant center of the world, calling China to Indonesia will be influential powers, as global power shifts from the West.

In his speech on Saturday, PM Orban said, Russian leadership is "very rational" and Ukraine will never be able to fulfill its hopes of becoming a member of the European Union or NATO.

He said this while predicting a shift in global power from the "irrational" West to Asia and Russia.

"In the next few decades, maybe centuries, Asia will become the dominant center of the world," PM Orban said, mentioning China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as the world's great powers in the future, reported by CNN, July 29.

"And we Westerners are pushing Russia into this bloc too," he said in a televised speech before ethnic Hungarians at a festival in the Romanian city of Baile Tusnad.

PM Orban, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, is in stark contrast to other countries in the bloc by seeking warmer relations with Beijing and Moscow. He angered some EU leaders when he made an unannounced visit to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing this month for talks on the war in Ukraine.

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

He said Russia had gained influence in many parts of the world by cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights.

“The strongest international appeal of Russia’s soft power is its opposition to LGBTQ,” he said.

As for Ukraine, he said Kyiv would never become a member of the EU or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) because “we Europeans don’t have enough money for that”.

"The European Union needs to shed its identity as a political project, becoming an economic and defense project," added PM Orban.

The European Union is known to have opened membership negotiations with Ukraine late last month, although a long and difficult road still has to be taken by Kyiv before it can join the bloc.

Most recently, NATO at its annual summit this month in Washington D.C, the United States issued a declaration saying the alliance would support Ukraine on its "irreversible path" to membership.