BBG: Hungary Willing To Drop Ukraine Funding Veto If All EU Funds Released

Bloomberg reporting that, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief political advisor, "Hungary is prepared to lift its veto on a massive European Union funding proposal for Ukraine in return for billions in financing the bloc has been withholding from Budapest..."

• Balazs Orban, Prime Minister Orban's political director, told Bloomberg: “Hungary’s EU funding and Ukraine’s financing are two separate issues. But if the EU insists that Ukraine’s financing should come from an amended EU budget, then the two issues become linked.”
• MNI's Political Risk team noted todaythat the EU is expected to unfreeze around EUR10bn this week in exchange for partial progress in resolving rule-of-law issues, a move widely seen as an attempt to dissuade Orban from vetoing additional Ukraine funding.
• BBG notes: "Budapest is raising the stakes just as the EU is expected to release about €10 billion of financing ... But Orban said he wants the the EU to hand over the full amount — around €30 billion — that was suspended last year on rule of law and graft concerns."
• Orban's apparently maximalist demand comes as Kyiv struggles to secure funding from either the EU or the US. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is currently in Washington DC lobbying lawmakers to approve a ~USD60bln tranche of funding which is stalled over highly politicised negotiations to secure the US-Mexico border.