The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said today that the rulers in Russia are “hyper-rationalists” and that Ukraine will never be able to realize its ambition to join NATO or the EU.

Nationalist Orban, who has been in power since 2010, made the comments during a speech in which he predicted a shift of power worldwide from the “irrational” West to the Russia and Asia.

“Within the next long decades, maybe centuries, Asia will dominate the world,” Orban said, citing China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as future global superpowers.

“And we Westerners pushed the Russians into this bloc,” he commented in a taped speech to Hungarians attending a festival in the town of Baile Tusnad in neighboring Romania.

Orban, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, has radically diverged from the rest of the bloc by seeking closer ties with Beijing and Moscow and angered some EU leaders when he carried out surprise attacks in Kiev, Moscow and in Beijing this month for talks on the war in Ukraine.

As he said, in contrast to the “weakness” of the West, Russia’s position on international issues is logical and predictable, while the country has shown economic flexibility in adapting to Western sanctions since it invaded the Crimea in 2014.

Orban, whose government has adopted a series of measures against the LGBTI+ community, said Russia has gained prestige in some parts of the world by suppressing LGBTI+ rights.

THE Ukraine it will never become a member of NATO or the EU because “we Europeans don’t have enough money for that”.

“The EU must give up its identity as a political project and become an economic and defense project,” suggested the Hungarian prime minister.