ANALYSIS: Hungary Is No Longer Alone — The New Geometry of European Blockades

ANALYSIS: Hungary Is No Longer Alone — The New Geometry of European Blockades

Introduction: when Paris and Rome join Budapest in the art of obstruction

An unexpected front at the heart of the Union

Ever since Viktor Orbán turned Hungary into the European Union's principal institutional sparring partner, the image had crystallized: one holdout against twenty-six. That comforting picture has just been shattered. The 21st sanctions package against Russia, proposed by the Commission on June 9, 2026, reveals that France and Italy are now actively slowing down a measure that had previously enjoyed consensus — the ban on entry into the EU for Russian veterans.

This is not a formal veto. It is something more insidious: a diplomatic slowdown dressed in legal concerns, delaying the implementation of a measure both countries claim to support in principle. In Kyiv, the dance is watched with growing unease. In Brussels, Eastern European chancelleries are seething in silence.

The text that divides: 1.5 million veterans targeted

The Commission's proposal, championed by Ursula von der Leyen, aims to bar entry into Schengen for any Russian military personnel who served since the war began — potentially 1.5 million veterans. The EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, had summed up the stakes back in April: "Europe's door should not be open to Russia's ex-combatants." A crisp formula, a clear principle — but one that stumbles in practice.

According to Bloomberg, cited by Euromaidan Press on June 26, 2026, Rome and Paris do not dispute the objective. They worry that the current wording could open the door to a blanket ban on all Russian citizens, and raise a formidable practical question: who, in each member state, will be responsible for verifying the military history of a Russian national arriving at a border? Diplomatic sources describe the task as "unworkable."

The 21st package: ambition at variable geometry

An unprecedented arsenal of measures

Beyond the veterans question, the 21st sanctions package is among the most ambitious since the war began. It includes expanded financial restrictions targeting 31 additional Russian banks, new measures against cryptocurrency, an unprecedented framework for the fishing sector — the first time that sector has featured in a sanctions package — and the freeze of the oil price cap at $44.10 per barrel, preventing its automatic market-linked rise.

Russia's shadow fleet — that network of aging tankers circumventing sanctions — also features prominently, with 30 additional tankers added to the blacklist. These are concrete, quantifiable measures that are technically complex to circumvent. But they require, as always, unanimity among the 27.

The unanimity rule: a structural lock

This is the Gordian knot of the system. European foreign and security policy remains subject to unanimous Council votes, granting each member state an absolute veto. Budapest has wielded this power repeatedly. But when Paris or Rome signal reluctance — even without a formal veto — the effect on negotiations is identical: the package stalls and timelines stretch.

The European Council's decision of June 18, 2026 to renew sanctions for 12 months instead of the traditional six represented a signal of unity — the first annual renewal in history. But this procedural progress does not mask the underlying tensions that resurface the moment a new, more restrictive measure lands on the table.

Bulgaria enters the fray: a third front

Radev and the Lukoil risk

As if the French-Italian blockade were not enough, Rumen Radev, Bulgaria's pro-Moscow prime minister, announced he would veto the 21st package if it touched Lukoil, the Russian oil giant that operates the only Bulgarian refinery, in Burgas. Sofia also cites dependencies on metro spare parts and fertilizers supplied by Russia.

This is not a new position — Bulgaria has regularly weaponized its energy dependencies to slow sanctions — but it illustrates the geographic and economic complexity of the problem. Post-communist Eastern Europe remains deeply entangled with the Russian economic fabric, creating levers that Moscow can activate at will.

The geography of blockades

What is striking about this new landscape is that points of resistance are no longer concentrated in the East. Budapest remains the most emblematic case, with Viktor Orbán having formally labeled Ukraine an "enemy of Hungary" in February 2026. But the hesitations of Paris, the objections of Rome, the announced veto from Sofia — they sketch a geography of obstruction that now runs across the entire continent, from the banks of the Danube to the shores of the Mediterranean.

For the Baltic states and Poland, which live under Russian threat daily and push for ever harder sanctions, this spectacle is appalling. Their ambassadors in Brussels can barely conceal their frustration.

The French position: pragmatism or strategic ambiguity?

Macron and the impossible balance

The France of Emmanuel Macron has embodied a permanent tension since 2022: firmly supporting Ukraine while keeping doors open toward Moscow in the name of a "strategic autonomy" that, in certain European circles, looks more like equidistance. Macron increased the French defense budget from €32 to €47 billion between 2017 and 2024, with a target of €64 billion by 2027 — a real effort.

But on the veterans question, Paris raises an argument that, legally, is not without merit: should a sanctions package — an economic instrument — really be the vehicle for managing a security-related migration policy? Would it not be better handled through the common visa policy framework, where decisions are made differently? This is a technical argument behind which deeper reluctance may — or may not — be hiding.

Meloni's Italy: between the Alliance and ambiguities

Giorgia Meloni's Italy presents an even more paradoxical profile. A declared Atlanticist and steadfast ally of Ukraine in official statements, Rome nevertheless seems to seek room for maneuver on certain specific measures. Her deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, co-president of the Patriots for Europe group alongside Orbán, has never hidden his sympathy for Moscow. This internal cohabitation creates tensions that ripple through Rome's European position.

According to Foreign Policy, 57% of Italians opposed defense spending increases in early 2026 polling, making Italy a European "outlier" on security questions. This domestic reality weighs on Italy's negotiators in Brussels.

Ukraine watches: what the blockade signals to Kyiv

Zelensky and the diplomacy of sanctions

Volodymyr Zelensky has himself declared that Ukraine's "sanctions" against Russia come in the form of drone strikes — a way of signaling that when diplomatic mechanisms seize up, the military front steps in. But behind this voluntarist rhetoric, Kyiv anxiously monitors the solidity of the European coalition.

Zelensky's sanctions adviser declared on June 26, 2026 that the Russian economy had reached a "dead end." If sanctions are truly biting — and all indicators (budget deficit, Urals oil price, inflation) suggest they are beginning to take effect — then blocking new measures is that much more costly.

The signal sent to Putin

From the Kremlin, every crack in the sanctions front is a confirmation that pressure can be absorbed, that Western democracies will eventually yield to their internal contradictions. Vladimir Putin understood this long ago: the real war is not only in the trenches of the Donbas; it is also in the negotiating rooms of the EU Council.

When Paris and Rome slow down a package, they are not supporting Putin — let us be clear. But they are inadvertently offering him a few extra weeks of breathing room. In a war of attrition where every month counts, that is not trivial.

The Baltic states and Poland: fury from the East

Kallas, Tsahkna and the existential urgency

For Estonian Chancellor Kaja Kallas, now the EU's top diplomat, the proposal to ban Russian ex-combatants is not an abstract matter of principle — it is a national security necessity. Estonia shares a direct border with Russia, has a Russian-speaking minority that Moscow regularly weaponizes, and carries a recent history of Soviet aggression.

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna had placed the issue on the agenda as early as January 2026, calling for a visa ban on security grounds. He does not understand — and cannot understand — how his Western partners can hesitate over what seems to him self-evident.

Poland and the Eastern flank under pressure

Poland, which now spends more than 4% of GDP on defense, hosts several thousand American troops, and is daily reinforcing its border fortifications with Belarus, lives in a state of permanent alert. For Warsaw, every additional sanctions measure is a brick in the architecture of collective deterrence. Watching them blocked by Paris or Rome feels like a betrayal.

Poland's foreign minister warned, according to Euromaidan Press on June 24, 2026, that Putin's rhetoric constituted "an announcement of provocation." In that context, Western European hesitations over sanctions appear not merely misplaced, but dangerous.

The precedents: Hungary, Slovakia, Malta, Greece — the list grows

A history of à-la-carte blockades

The history of European sanctions against Russia is punctuated by blockades. Hungary delayed the 20th package until an exemption was granted on oil transiting the Druzhba pipeline. Slovakia under Prime Minister Robert Fico followed a similar line. Malta and Greece blocked the ban on maritime services linked to Russian oil, protecting Greek shipowners profiting handsomely from the shadow fleet.

Each package has required compromises, exemptions, delays. The result is a sanctions regime formally robust but practically riddled with exceptions that reduce its real-world impact. Moscow knows these gaps perfectly and exploits them methodically.

The unanimity rule: a reform that has become urgent

The structural solution to this problem is well known to every European legal scholar: shift foreign and security policy to qualified majority voting. That would require treaty revision — a long and uncertain process. Voices are rising, notably in Germany and the Nordic countries, to accelerate this reform. But the same countries that block sanctions today would be the ones blocking that institutional reform tomorrow.

This is the paradox of the Union: to change the rules that enable blockades, you need the unanimity of those who benefit from those rules.

Bulgaria post-Orbán: Orbánism without Orbán

Radev: Moscow's man or a pragmatist?

Rumen Radev is not Viktor Orbán. He does not display the same inflammatory nationalist rhetoric, does not cultivate the same personal ties with Putin. But the effects of his policy — blocking sanctions, defending Lukoil, resisting Ukrainian aid measures — are structurally identical. Bulgaria, a NATO and EU member, has a Russian presence in its energy sector that makes it partially hostage to its own dependencies.

The Burgas refinery, operated by Lukoil, represents a significant share of fuel supply across the Balkan peninsula. Closing or sanctioning it would have real effects on Bulgarian consumers. This is a political argument Radev can brandish before his electorate — and he does not hold back.

The erosion of the pro-sanctions bloc

What is new in June 2026 is the widening geography of the blockade. Previously, the fault line was clearly defined: the Central and Eastern European countries closest to Moscow against the rest. Now, with France and Italy hesitating, the very center of the European project is wavering.

The Commission can present the 21st package as a major step forward — and on several dimensions, it is — but the visible cracks in its negotiation send a worrying signal about the durability of the pro-sanctions coalition.

The French-Italian argument in detail: procedural flaw or substantive blockade?

The verification question: a genuine challenge

The central argument of Paris and Rome deserves to be taken seriously. How can a border agent at Roissy or Fiumicino verify that a Russian national presenting a civilian passport has not served in the Russian armed forces since 2022? Russia does not certify its veterans for Europe's benefit. There is no internationally accessible database. The intelligence effort required would be colossal.

This is a genuine operational problem. But it is one amenable to solutions: self-declaration under penalty of sanctions, intelligence-sharing between European services, diplomatic pressure on third countries that could provide information. These solutions exist; they require political will to implement.

The right legal framework: sanctions or visa policy?

The question raised by Paris — is this the right legal vehicle? — has genuine legitimacy. Sanctions are economic instruments; entry bans are generally the domain of immigration and visa policy, which falls partly under national sovereignty. Using a sanctions package to manage entry restrictions creates legal precedents that could cause problems down the road.

The answer to this is that in the urgency of war, and given the inability of member states to act in concert on visa policy, sanctions are sometimes the only available vehicle. This is not ideal. But the ideal must not become the enemy of the necessary.

What sanctions are actually doing to Russia

An economy under growing pressure

The economic data of June 2026 vindicate sanctions advocates. Urals oil is trading around $44 per barrel — near the price cap level — compared to over $109 in April 2024. Russia's budget deficit is around 3% of GDP, with 40% of state spending absorbed by the war effort. Russia faces structural inflation, fuel rationing in 56 regions, and a contracting GDP in the first quarter of 2026.

This is not the collapse some predicted. Moscow has demonstrated genuine resilience, mobilizing reserves, restructuring its economy toward war production, and seeking commercial alternatives in Asia. But the structural deterioration is real, progressive, and cumulative. Each additional sanctions package accelerates this process.

The cost of inaction

Blocking or delaying the 21st package therefore preserves a few extra weeks of oil revenues for Putin. It allows a few hundred Russian veterans to move freely through Europe. These are not isolated catastrophes — but in accumulation, they represent a signal of weakness that the Kremlin registers and exploits.

Zelensky's sanctions adviser is right to use the term "dead end." The Russian economy is in a dead end — but a dead end only leads to an exit if its escape routes remain blocked. European hesitations reopen windows that sanctions are supposed to shut.

Toward a two-speed sanctions architecture?

The temptation of a smaller circle

An idea is circulating in certain Brussels and Nordic circles: create a sub-group of member states — say the Baltic countries, Poland, the Scandinavians, the Czechs, the Dutch — that would go further on sanctions on a national or multilateral basis, outside the EU framework. This would be a coalition of the willing applying measures that unanimity prevents imposing on the Twenty-Seven.

This workaround has merits. It would allow action without being blocked by Budapest or Sofia. But it weakens the EU's legal architecture, creates distortions in the internal market, and above all sends a signal of weakening European cohesion — precisely what Moscow is trying to provoke.

Pressure from external allies

The United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada are watching the cracks in the European front with concern. Washington reinstated severe sanctions against Russian oil — the waiver having expired on June 17, 2026 without renewal — and expects Europe to maintain its own pressure. Every Brussels blockade becomes an argument in the American debate about the reliability of European allies.

For Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defense, who already accuses NATO nations of "free riding," French-Italian tergiversations over sanctions only fuel his rhetoric. This is a collateral effect that Paris and Rome appear to underestimate.

Eastern Europe's long memory

Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia: history as compass

To understand why the Baltic states push so hard, one must remember that they were occupied by the USSR for half a century. Their current leaders grew up with that memory or in stories passed down by their parents. When they hear that Russian ex-soldiers could circulate freely in Tallinn, Riga, or Vilnius, it is not an intellectual abstraction — it is a concrete threat to their security.

Latvian intelligence published warnings in June 2026 about potential Russian "provocations" targeting the Baltic states and Poland. In that context, the presence of Russian veterans in Schengen is not merely symbolic — it represents a potential vector for hybrid operations.

A Europe of multiple speeds of memory

There is a gap in perception between Western Europe, which sees Russia as a distant problem, and Eastern Europe, which experiences it as a daily existential threat. This gap is well documented — it manifests in defense spending, arms transfers, and sanctions. The veterans question is merely its latest expression.

Bridging this gap is not simple. It requires geopolitical empathy — the capacity to put oneself in the position of partners whose historical experience is radically different. This is political work that Western capitals are slow to accomplish.

The June 26 vote: a revealing test

The Council meeting that resolved little

On June 26, 2026, member states were set to formally debate the 21st package. The French-Italian blockades over the flagship measure on veterans delayed adoption. No agreement was announced on that specific provision. The Commission continues to negotiate, seeking a compromise formulation that would satisfy Paris and Rome's concerns without gutting the measure of meaning.

This is the habitual mechanics of European sanctions: negotiate in agony, find a last-minute agreement, present the result as a collective victory. The problem is that each such cycle erodes the credibility of the instrument a little further.

The package without its flagship article

Sources in Brussels are considering the possibility of adopting the 21st package without the veterans measure, pushing it to a later package or handling it through a different legal framework. This would save the essentials — the economic measures, the price cap freeze, the new financial sanctions — at the cost of a symbolically heavy concession.

For it is precisely on the symbolic dimension that part of the sanctions' impact rests: they signal to Moscow, to ordinary Russians, and to global public opinion that Europe regards participation in the invasion as an act with personal consequences. Removing that element weakens the message.

The sanctions calendar: between urgency and institutional slowness

The negotiation process: an exhausting marathon

Every European sanctions package follows a long and constraining institutional process. The European Commission proposes, Council working groups negotiate, ambassadors debate, foreign ministers approve, and finally the Council adopts by unanimity. For a straightforward package, this process takes several weeks. For an ambitious package like the 21st package, with contested measures, it can stretch over months. And every week of delay is another week during which sanctions targets continue operating normally.

Russia has learned to exploit these delays. It had months to restructure its financial circuits before certain measures were fully adopted, to find third-country transit routes for its oil exports, to develop alternatives to the Western services it was about to lose. The speed of sanctions implementation matters as much as their content — and on this front, the European Union structurally underperforms.

Lessons for future packages

Brussels negotiators are already working on a 22nd package. Informal discussions suggest it could target more heavily the third-party companies facilitating circumvention — notably in Central Asia and the Caucasus — and strengthen measures against the oil shadow fleet. But the same dynamics will apply: member states defending their particular economic interests, a unanimity rule that amplifies every hesitation, a process that consumes months of diplomatic energy for results often falling short of initial ambitions.

The real lesson of the 21st sanctions package is that reforming the EU's foreign policy instruments — notably the shift to qualified majority voting — has become more urgent than ever. Without it, every future package will face the same blockades, the same delays, the same signals of weakness sent to Moscow. And Putin will continue to take note.

Conclusion: European unity is capital that depreciates

From variable geometry to disintegration

The new geometry of European blockades revealed by the 21st package is not a catastrophe in itself. The Union has always functioned in tension, in permanent negotiation between diverging national interests. But there is a threshold beyond which "variable geometry" becomes a structural dysfunction that weakens the entire project.

When Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and now partially France and Italy slow sanctions for reasons as different as allegiance to Moscow, energy dependency, electoral calculation, or legal caution — the final result is identical: Putin gains time.

The call to Europe

Kaja Kallas and the Eastern governments are right to insist. The moment is critical: Russia is showing genuine signs of economic fragility, the military front is weighing on its capabilities, and the diplomatic window remains ajar. This is precisely the moment when pressure should be at its maximum, not its minimum. A Europe that shows itself united and resolute accelerates the end of the conflict. A Europe that hesitates prolongs it.

Hungary is no longer alone, it is true. But Ukraine is not alone either — and it is on that solidarity that everything rests.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and what my biases are

I am a columnist and analyst specializing in European geopolitics and defense. I am pro-Ukraine, I consider Zelensky a remarkable leader in extraordinary circumstances, and I believe that resisting Russian aggression is a just cause that engages the fundamental values of the West. I am critical of positions that, even inadvertently, weaken pressure on Moscow. This bias influences my treatment of subjects like sanctions blockades — I have less patience for delaying arguments than some other analysts might.

What I do not know and my method

I do not have access to confidential EU Council negotiations. I cannot say with certainty whether French-Italian objections are made in good faith or constitute deliberate obstruction. My reading rests on public statements, wire service reports, and analyses available as of June 27, 2026. All citations and figures are drawn from dated, verifiable sources. Where I infer or interpret, I try to be transparent that this is my judgment, not an established fact.

Sources

Primary sources

Euromaidan Press — France and Italy stall ban on Russian ex-soldiers — June 26, 2026

Kyiv Independent — EU unveils 21st sanctions package — June 9, 2026

Euromaidan Press — 21st package would bar Russian soldiers from European soil — June 9, 2026

Euromaidan Press — EU renews sanctions for a full year for the first time — June 19, 2026

Secondary sources

The Guardian — EU plans to ban Russian soldiers under new sanctions — June 9, 2026

Ukrinform — Von der Leyen unveils new sanctions package — June 9, 2026

Foreign Policy — The European rearmament paradox — January 28, 2026