Hungary's Embassy in Ukraine described Ukrainian Deputy PM Vereshchuk's conclusions on Hungary's "strategic calm" approach as "false and baseless, but also outright offensive."Continue reading
Hungary knew in advance about the Russian attack on Ukraine and expected not only open cooperation with Russia, but also the capture of part of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council said in a television broadcast, as reported by Ukrainian newspaper Hromadske. However, he did not provide any evidence of this.
This article was originally published on our sister-site, Ungarn Heute.
According to Danilov, some NATO countries do not respect the democratic values required by the organization. “Hungary, for example, openly commits itself to cooperation with Russia. Moreover, Budapest was warned in advance by Russian President Putin that an attack on Ukraine was imminent,” he said, accusing Hungary of trying to reclaim Ukrainian territories that once belonged to Hungary.
They see how Hungary is behaving, and for some reason they expected to be able to win back their territories. But that’s not going to happen, we’re going to win,”
he emphasized. “I also wonder what the consequences of such behavior of a country will be after the war,” he added.
This is not the first time the issue has been raised.
In mid-March, former Polish Foreign Minister and current EPP MEP Radosław Sikorski also suggested in a tweet that Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin had reached an agreement on the division of Ukraine.
The Polish politician was reacting to news that the head of the military administration in Transcarpathia had warned of a disinformation campaign launched by Russia. According to these false rumors, the ethnic minorities in Transcarpathia are trying to break away from Ukraine.
Radosław Sikorski is not the only one who has recently accused Hungary of wanting to acquire Transcarpathia.
As we reported earlier, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk sharply criticized the Orbán government on social media. In her Facebook post, she complained, among other things, about Hungary not supplying weapons to Ukraine, and that the Hungarian government’s rhetoric hardly differed from an openly pro-Russian position. Vereshchuk posed the question: “Is this because of cheap gas or because Hungary is still secretly dreaming of the Carpathians? Do Hungarians want to be the ones who stab us in the back in such a difficult situation? And why all this? For a small Russian pittance?”
However, no evidence was presented in these cases either.
Fidesz deputy Zsolt Németh reacted to the accusations at the time and rejected them unequivocally. He said: the assumption of an Orbán-Putin deal on the division of Ukraine is “ridiculous.” He added: “Mr. Radosław Sikorski probably drank too much vodka.”
Tamás Menczer, the foreign ministry’s state secretary for communications, also reacted to the statements on Facebook:
Our decision is clear: we will not supply weapons to the war in Ukraine. The Hungarian people decided this quite clearly on April 3. We understand that the Ukrainian government is not happy about this decision, but we will not change this decision even if they invent more and more blatant lies and nonsense stories every day.”
Featured image via Zoltán Máthé/MTI
