The irony is pointed: Hungary is now seeking an alternative supply route for Russian crude oil through the Adria pipeline — and it desperately needs that route precisely because Russia struck the Druzhba pipeline system that previously served as its primary delivery path.
Croatia has rejected Budapest's request. According to reporting by United24, Croatian authorities declined to permit Russian crude to transit the Adria pipeline — a Soviet-era infrastructure link running from the port of Rijeka on the Adriatic Sea through to Hungary and Slovakia. In doing so, Zagreb made a pointed observation: Russia itself bears direct responsibility for the supply disruption that has left Budapest scrambling for alternatives, having struck the Ukrainian energy infrastructure that created the crisis in the first place.
That observation is the sharpest element of the Croatian position — and it is the lede for anyone trying to understand the politics beneath the pipeline dispute.
The pipeline geography and its Cold War origins
The Adria pipeline is itself a Cold War artifact, built in the 1970s as part of the Yugoslav-era effort to diversify away from Soviet energy dependency. It was designed to run in the opposite direction of the Druzhba — bringing non-Soviet crude into Central Europe from the Adriatic coast rather than from the east. That it is now being considered as a conduit for Russian oil represents a particular kind of historical reversal.
Hungary's government, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has long maintained that its continued dependence on Russian energy is a matter of national economic necessity. The Druzhba pipeline, which historically carried Russian crude westward through Ukraine and Slovakia, was disrupted by Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure — a development that left Budapest seeking alternative delivery mechanisms for the same Russian crude it has consistently refused to sanction.
The Orbán energy posture and Brussels' response
Orbán's energy-security argument has a surface plausibility: Hungary is a landlocked country with historically limited alternative supply options. But Brussels has long resisted that framing, viewing Budapest's maintenance of Russian energy contracts — combined with its consistent obstruction of EU sanctions — as a Kremlin-aligned posture rather than a purely defensive national interest calculation.
In Russia, as in much of the former Soviet space, understanding requires reading between the lines. The EU has since 2022 made significant investments in alternative supply infrastructure, including expanded LNG terminal capacity at Poland's Swinoujscie terminal and new interconnector pipelines designed to reduce Central European dependency on Russian routes. Independent energy analysts have noted that Hungary's technical alternatives are more numerous today than Orbán's government has publicly acknowledged.
Croatia joined the EU in 2013 and has positioned itself as a constructively pro-European member state. Its refusal to serve as a conduit for Russian oil — even to a fellow EU member — reflects the broader European consensus that energy infrastructure should not sustain Russian export revenues during an active war on the continent.
The broader EU rift
The Croatia-Hungary dispute is one of three interconnected energy and policy stories illuminating the same dynamic this week. Hungary is separately blocking the EU's 20th Russia sanctions package over an objection related to sports officials — a pattern of obstruction that has now recurred across nineteen consecutive rounds of sanctions negotiations. And Secretary of State Rubio's warm engagement with Orbán in Munich has raised questions about whether Washington will apply any meaningful pressure on Budapest to align more closely with European consensus.
European Commission officials have declined to comment directly on the pipeline dispute, which remains technically a bilateral infrastructure matter between two member states. But the political symbolism is unmistakable — and the episode is likely to prompt formal legal review in Brussels of the circumstances under which member states can block energy transit requests from other EU members.
