Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the final hurdle to Ukraine receiving a massive European Union loan, the latest tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, and China praising three African nations for defying Taiwan.

Orban Reverses Course—Again

Ukraine reopened its section of the Druzhba pipeline on Wednesday, removing a key roadblock that was stopping the European Union from approving a massive aid package for Kyiv. According to Ukrainian pipeline operator Ukrtransnafta, Russian crude is now expected to arrive in Hungary and Slovakia by Thursday—just in time for Budapest to lift its veto on the loan deal.

In December, EU members approved a loan of 90 billion euros (roughly $105 billion) for Ukraine. This package is “literally a matter of life and death” for Kyiv, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Taras Kachka said on Tuesday. Two-thirds of the loan has been allocated for bolstering Ukraine’s defense capabilities as part of its war against Russia, while the rest is planned to go toward the country’s broader financial needs.

However, in February, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban withdrew Budapest’s support for the loan after Kyiv halted all oil shipments through the pipeline.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said at the time that Kyiv closed Druzhba due to damage caused by Russian “terrorist attacks on the pipeline and surrounding infrastructure.” Moscow has repeatedly targeted critical Ukrainian infrastructure. However, Orban accused Ukraine of blocking the oil for political reasons—namely, to tip the scales in favor of Peter Magyar, Orban’s main opponent in this spring’s parliamentary elections; Orban ultimately lost that vote to Magyar earlier this month.

“We’re waiting for the oil. The rest is just fairy tales,” Orban told reporters in March, after the EU failed to get Hungary to lift its veto. Orban is a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. And in recent years, his country has become heavily reliant on Russian energy exports, with Hungary receiving most of its crude through the Druzhba pipeline and most of its natural gas through contracts with Moscow’s state-owned Gazprom.

Now that Orban is expected to leave office in May, though, he has agreed to drop Hungary’s veto as soon as Druzhba reopens. “Once oil deliveries are restored, we will no longer stand in the way of approving the loan,” Orban wrote on X on Sunday.

That day came today. “There can be no grounds for blocking it anymore,” Zelensky said on X in reference to the loan deal. “The EU asked Ukraine to repair the Druzhba oil pipeline, which had been destroyed by Russia. We have repaired it. We hope the EU will also deliver on the agreed commitments.”

The package is expected to be formally approved on Thursday, though it could take weeks for funding to arrive in Kyiv. EU ambassadors also agreed to move forward on Thursday with a package of sanctions against Russia.

Today’s Most Read

• Who Wants to Be an American Diplomat? by Sam Skove and Rachel Oswald
• The World Is Paying the Price for America’s War by Ravi Agrawal
• How Big of a Threat Is Mythos? by Rishi Iyengar

What We’re Following

Pressure on Hormuz. Iranian forces fired on three cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, seizing two of them. According to Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the MSC Francesca and the Greek-owned Epaminondas were both escorted to Iran, while the third vessel, the Euphoria, was left “stranded” on the Iranian coast. Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis told CNN on Wednesday that the Epaminondas had sustained “extremely wide damage.”

Wednesday’s attacks show that despite efforts to reignite U.S.-Iran peace talks, both sides appear willing to exert pressure on the Strait of Hormuz to achieve their wartime ambitions. On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to continue the blockade of Iranian ports, arguing that if he were to reverse course, then “there can never be a Deal with Iran, unless we blow up the rest of their Country, their leaders included!”

Washington and Tehran were supposed to hold a second round of peace talks in Islamabad this week. However, both sides postponed the scheduled meeting, with lead Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf writing on X on Wednesday that a “complete ceasefire only makes sense if it is not violated by the maritime blockade and the hostage-taking of the world’s economy.”

Trump, citing Iran’s “seriously fractured” government, announced on Tuesday that the United States would extend its cease-fire with Iran until Tehran is able to come up with a “unified” peace proposal. He did not put a deadline on the extension.

Few friends for Taiwan. China praised three African nations on Wednesday for refusing to let a plane carrying Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te fly over their territories—forcing Lai to cancel a visit to Eswatini. This was the first time that Taipei has had to call off a foreign trip due to denial of airspace. Eswatini is one of just 12 nations—and the only one in Africa—that has diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

A Taiwanese official accused Beijing on Wednesday of using “economic coercion” to convince Madagascar, Mauritius, and the Seychelles to revoke Taiwan’s access. “No amount of threats or coercion will shake Taiwan’s resolve to engage with the world or diminish our contributions to the global community,” Lai wrote on X.

However, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office denied coercing these nations, arguing that they were just adhering to the “One China” principle, which states that Taiwan is part of China and is not its own country. Officials from Madagascar and the Seychelles said on Wednesday that they denied Lai’s plane access because they do not recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty. In response, the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry accused both countries of acting “in ⁠servitude of China.”

LGBTQ+ rights. The European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that a Hungarian law banning minors from accessing LGBTQ+ media violates a founding EU treaty.

Orban’s government adopted legislation in 2021 that prohibits children from seeing content depicting gender nonconformity or homosexuality, arguing that this protects minors from “sexual propaganda.” The law also issues harsher penalties for pedophilia. However, on Tuesday, the EU court ruled that the law “stigmatises and marginalises” LGBTQ+ individuals and violates Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union, which prohibits discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation.

Orban’s administration has repeatedly cracked down on LGBTQ+ rights. In 2020, Hungary amended the constitution to strip same-sex couples of their parental rights. That same year, lawmakers also passed a bill criminalizing gender changes. And last April, Budapest passed a constitutional amendment banning public LGBTQ+ events, effectively outlawing Budapest Pride, a popular weeklong festival.

Magyar, who is set to replace Orban next month, has largely avoided directly discussing Budapest’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies. However, in his victory speech on April 12, Magyar stressed that Hungary should be a country “where no one is stigmatized for thinking differently than the majority or loving differently than the majority.”

Odds and Ends

The Iran war has effectively halted most traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, choking off critical supplies of energy and fertilizer and causing dire economic and humanitarian repercussions. But global energy flows are not the only necessities impacted by the conflict. Malaysia’s Karex Bhd, the world’s top condom-maker, told Reuters on Tuesday that it plans to raise prices by 20 percent to 30 percent due to supply chain disruptions. Delayed aluminum shipments have caused a shortage of Diet Coke in India. Chinese suppliers are struggling to cheaply acquire the materials needed to make stuffed plushies. And U.S. products that rely on petrochemicals for production, such as crayons and lipstick, are becoming more difficult to come by.