Hungarian OTP Bank is on the list because the Ukrainian authorities say it continues to cooperate with Russia.Continue reading
The EU’s argument regarding peace in Ukraine that the conditions for negotiations on a settlement of the conflict have not yet been met, is disingenuous and self-defeating, while Hungary continues to call for a ceasefire and peace talks as soon as possible, Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó said at the MCC festival in Esztergom on Saturday.
Speaking at a panel discussion on the challenges of Hungary’s foreign policy and foreign trade, the minister stressed that since the invasion of Ukraine more than 500 days ago, Europe has fallen into a war psychosis and the common foreign policy has been reduced to this one issue.
“For more than 500 days we have been talking only about the war. However, we know exactly what people think about the war. Virtually everyone thinks the same thing. This war is wrong, it is brutal, people die, a country is practically destroyed, the war must stop, it must be condemned, the aggressor and the victim must be clearly named,” he noted.
Some people try to make it look like there is no debate about this. However, for 500 days we have been talking about it (…). When we ask to talk about peace, they say you are a Putin friend, a Kremlin propagandist, a friend of the Russians, a spy, etc.”
He called it hypocritical that when there are armed conflicts in other parts of the world, the EU immediately calls for a ceasefire and peace talks, but not in Ukraine, that is unacceptable and harmful.
The minister recalled that the counterargument is always that the conditions are not yet right, while, as he said, “the conditions will be worse tomorrow than today, and yesterday the conditions were better than today, because yesterday fewer people died than today, and tomorrow there will be more deaths.”
Péter Szijjártó called the EU’s proposal to subsidize arms deliveries to Ukraine with up to 20 billion euros over the next four years shocking, saying it indicated that the EU assumed that there would be another four years of war no matter what.
He pointed out that it was also problematic that
Hungary had to spend 200 million euros on this without receiving the EU funds to which it was entitled, and that OTP was on the list of international sponsors of the war in Ukraine.
On the issue of sanctions, he said that the imposed restrictions had failed, because contrary to their original purpose, they had not brought Russia to its knees and closer to peace, and that the political consequences should be drawn.
He also explained that while the mainstream wants the world to believe that the transatlantic space is congruent with the world, in reality the global majority is in favor of peace because the price of war is paid by all.
Via Ungarn Heute, Featured photo via Facebook/Szijjártó Péter