Western countries can no longer afford to “integrate” Ukraine into NATO, Hungary’s PM has claimed Viktor Orban in an interview with conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson.

In the interview, which was published on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday, the Hungarian prime minister claimed to the former Fox News host that there had been “real opportunity” to integrate Ukraine into the North Atlantic Alliance at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008. But “there was no agreement among the major Western countries to do that,” so the idea was dropped, Orban said.

“We missed the historic opportunity to do it (integrate the Ukrainians into NATO. And this window of opportunity is no longer open, therefore we cannot do this. So, we cannot afford to have a long border line between Russia and NATO-owned Ukraine – that would mean immediate war danger for all of us, even in Washington,” Orban warned.

According to the Hungarian Prime Minister, the North Atlantic Alliance should to “forget” Ukraine’s accession to NATO and to agree on a new security architecture with Moscow. “We should make a deal with the Russians on the new security architecture to provide security and sovereignty for Ukraine, but not NATO membership,” Orban argued.