Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday Russia’s leadership was “hyper rational” and that Ukraine would never be able to fulfil its hopes of becoming a member of the European Union or NATO.

Orban, a nationalist in power since 2010, made the comments during a speech in which he forecast a shift in global power away from the “irrational” West towards Asia and Russia.

“In the next long decades, maybe centuries, Asia will be the dominant centre of the world,” Orban said, mentioning China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as the world’s future big powers.

“And we Westerners pushed the Russians into this bloc as well,” he said in the televised speech before ethnic Hungarians at a festival in the town of Baile Tusnad in neighbouring Romania.