More details have emerged about the US sanctions.
The United States will impose sanctions on several people in Hungary, including officials of a Hungarian bank According to what Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Spokesmen for the White House National Security Council have not yet commented to the newspaper on this information, and the sources who spoke to the agency anonymously did not reveal the names of those involved.
David Pressman, the US ambassador to Hungary, is scheduled to hold a press conference in Budapest on Wednesday afternoon at 5 p.m., although the topic has not been announced. An embassy spokesperson told Bloomberg:
They cannot exchange information about sanctions,
There is no indication that the press conference is related to US deliberations on sanctions.
The United States has already imposed sanctions on people in European Union countries, including Hungary: the last time it tried to pressure the country was in 2014, when the Obama administration banned several Hungarian officials on suspicion of corruption.
We wrote on Tuesday that 444 has learned from several independent sources that the US government is planning to take action to punish Hungary.
There are several reasons for the deterioration of US-Hungarian relations:
- NATO: obstructing NATO expansion (while the government has said several times that it supports Sweden's accession, united government factions have been “debating” the matter for months);
- Energy science: Hungary has not taken decisive steps to eliminate Russian energy, does not appear to have abandoned Russian supplies in the PAX II case, and the Hungarian government is constantly working to ease sanctions against the Russians;
- Russian spiesHungary is currently the only EU member of the International Investment Bank, which has been derided as a “spy bank”;
- Russian propaganda: It is also distributed by the government and its press.
Cover photo: David Pressman, the new Ambassador of the United States of America to Budapest, at the press conference held after his arrival at Ferenc Liszt Airport on September 2, 2022. MTI/Koszticsák Solid
