Zelensky: Hungary acts as a pro-Russia, anti-NATO state

Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Sunday that it was “fortunately” not up to the Ukrainian president to decide if Hungary’s behaviour as a NATO member was appropriate or not.

Szijjártó responded to recent remarks by Volodymyr Zelensky stating that “Hungary’s behaviour as a NATO member is inappropriate”, MTI wrote. In an interview with Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian journalists, Zelensky said “it is a very strange situation, can a NATO country be for Russia and against NATO?”.

Zelensky highlighted that only a NATO membership could protect Ukraine from a Russian aggression, rtl.hu wrote. That is highly unlikely. First, all NATO members must agree to accept Ukraine’s bid. Türkiye and Hungary have not even accepted the Swedish NATO accession. And there is no war or territorial dispute in Sweden. Ukraine is at war with Russia, and the NATO’s statute excludes accepting such bids. Probably that is why PM Viktor Orbán was shocked when he heard Jens Stoltenberg’s announcement last week in Kyiv, in which he said Ukraine would become a NATO member state. The Hungarian prime minister reacted with a short question on his Twitter page: “What?!”

And that is not only the concern of Hungary. Media outlets agree that even NATO’s strongest military power, the United States, would not support Ukraine’s NATO accession at the moment. Decision makers in Washington know well that such a move would trigger WWIII, a direct clash between the world’s strongest military alliance and Russia. The problem is not whether it could be fought with traditional weapons. The problem is that, concerning the thousands of nuclear warheads each party has, there would be no winner in such a war.

Hungary’s foreign minister stroke back on Zelensky

Szijjártó said “fortunately, this is not up to him to decide”. Hungarians have already paid an extremely high price for the war in Ukraine. Many Hungarians, members of the ethnic Hungarian community in Transcarpathia, have died in the war, he said on Facebook. If Zelensky’s remarks mean that the Ukrainian president thanks Hungary for “letting in and looking after more than a million refugees from Ukraine” and if he thanks us that “we are continually sending aid”, then “we say certainly, and they can continue to rely on us in the future”, Szijjártó said.

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