At first glance, the Hungarian Prime Minister's trip was exactly what he had been looking for in Washington: exuberant praise and an exemption from sanctions on Russia's oil, gas and nuclear energy supplies, the BBC writes.
And all this just five months away from some difficult elections. On closer inspection, however, the picture is less clear.
The American side concluded a difficult trade deal – and a costly one for Hungary.
And there is no progress on Viktor Orban's biggest challenge: ending the war in neighboring Ukraine and, with it, the long shadow the conflict casts over Hungary.
Let's first look at Orban's key victory – a year of relief from US sanctions.
The time frame is interesting. Trump clearly wants to help his friend win the April election. And the exemption even partially matches the European Commission's request to all member states to end imports of Russian oil, gas and nuclear fuel by the end of 2027.
What is missing, from the EU's perspective, is any political commitment from Orban to meet this demand – a commitment made and fulfilled by the Czech government. And the EU is trying to tighten energy sanctions – to the fury of Hungary and Slovakia.
Away from the media spotlight, Hungarian energy company MOL has upgraded two of its refineries – Százhalombatta in Hungary and the Slovnaft facility in Bratislava – to process Brent crude instead of the high-sulfur Ural crude that travels through Russian pipelines.
On Friday, MOL said 80 percent of its oil needs could be imported through Croatia's Adria pipeline, albeit with higher logistical costs and technical risks.
So Orban's argument, which so impressed Trump, that Hungary, as a landlocked country, has no alternative to Russian oil, may not necessarily be true.
In total, Hungary and Slovakia together paid Russia $13 billion (£10 billion) for its oil between the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the end of 2024.
The one-year window granted by the US is still a valuable respite for Hungarian households this winter.
Orban told pro-government reporters traveling with him to Washington that otherwise utility bills “could have increased up to three times in December.” Limiting these bills through various means has been a central element of his popularity in Hungary since 2013.
Under the US waiver, Hungary can continue to buy Russian gas through the Turkstream pipeline, which runs through the Balkans, and pay for it in hard currency ($185 million in August alone), using a Bulgarian legal loophole. Orban has agreed to buy $600 million worth of US LNG, according to Bloomberg.
Another key part of the Washington agreement is nuclear power.
Hungary has agreed to buy nuclear fuel rods from the US for its Paks 1 nuclear power plant (at a cost of $114 million), alongside those bought from Russia's Rosatom and France's Framatome.
Russia's plans to finance and build the nuclear extension, called Paks 2, have long been delayed by technical and licensing issues. The US agreement to lift all nuclear sanctions on Hungary could help restart this project, but thorny issues remain.
Hungary also agreed to buy US technology to expand the short-term storage of spent nuclear fuel at Paks for between $100 million and $200 million.
Perhaps the most important part of the deal was Hungary's commitment to buy up to 10 small modular nuclear reactors from the US for between $10 billion and $20 billion.
Hungary needs electricity to power the huge Chinese nuclear power plants being built across the country. Smaller nuclear plants are less affected by construction delays and are easier to license.
Finally, there was also talk of a currency swap agreement – similar to a recent agreement between the US and Argentina to prop up the peso – in which the US and Hungarian central banks can exchange currencies.
This would mean that in a future financial crisis in Hungary, the US central bank could supply dollars to Budapest, which would increase Hungary's financial security.
So, in short, Hungary struck a deal to buy gas, nuclear power and unspecified weapons systems from the US in exchange for a temporary waiver from US sanctions on Russian oil and gas.
But he failed to win the reinstatement of the US visa waiver system, abolished in 2022, which hurts mutual trade. And he did not get a new date for a possible Trump-Putin summit in Budapest as part of efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Critics say energy dependence on Russia is being replaced by energy dependence on the US. The Orban government claims to achieve greater supply diversity.
