Viktor Orbán sharply criticized the EU’s plan to admit Ukraine to the bloc as quickly as possible, calling it an “open declaration of war” against Hungary.

As POLITICO reported Monday, the European Commission is hatching a plan to speed up Kyiv’s accession bid, potentially offering the war-torn country partial EU membership before it completes all the required reforms. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pushed for his country to join the bloc as early as 2027 as part of any peace deal with Russia.

Orbán, a close ally of Moscow, fiercely opposes Ukraine joining the EU. The European Commission and EU capitals are searching for ways to circumvent his veto, such as asking U.S. President Donald Trump to pressure Orbán or even using Article 7 of the EU treaty to strip Budapest’s voting rights, according to European diplomats and officials POLITICO spoke to.

That would be “an open declaration of war against Hungary,” the Hungarian premier warned Wednesday in a post on X.

Orbán said that POLITICO had “published Brussels’ and Kyiv’s latest war plan, the five-point Zelenskyy plan.”

“They have decided that Ukraine will be admitted to the Union as early as 2027,” he added. “They disregard the decision of the Hungarian people and are determined to remove the Hungarian government by any means necessary.”

Hungarians go to the polls in April for a fiercely contested general election. Orbán, who has been in power for the last two decades, is lagging in the polls and his Fidesz party will face off against an ascendant opposition, which has vowed to root out corruption and restore rule of law.

The Hungarian leader has repeatedly clashed with Zelenskyy and has used Ukraine’s future EU membership on the campaign trail, portraying Kyiv and Brussels as threats to Budapest’s independence.

“This April, at the ballot box, Hungarians must stop them,” he said. “Fidesz is the only force standing between Hungary and Brusselian rule, and the only guarantee of Hungarian sovereignty.”