Expert: Hungary endangers the NATO, the alliance will use force
Ukraine and Russia experts took part in a discussion about the ongoing war in Ukraine and the Hungarian government’s position towards Moscow and Kyiv as part of an event organised by mfor.hu’s Klasszis Klub Live. According to one of the experts, Hungary’s stance is no longer tolerable in the EU and NATO. But what will be the ‘solution’?
Hungary endangers the NATO
According to mfor.hu, András Rácz, a fellow researcher of the German Council on Foreign Relations, said that the EU reached the point when they would not give money to Budapest until compromises are made. NATO will use force, provided a small member state endangers its operation. For example, they called together the NATO-Ukraine council despite the Hungarian veto.
Therefore, Hungary’s position is no longer sustainable in the EU and NATO. The Orbán cabinet needs to change direction, and that may require replacing its first diplomat, Péter Szijjártó. However, Orbán has people inside and outside the ministry to carry out that change. And that is important because Hungary will be taking over the presidency of the Council of the EU next year.
Journalist Szabolcs Vörös said that the government’s Ukraine policy puts the Transcatpathian Hungarian community into a difficult position. “I am very concerned for their fate after the war”, he highlighted.
Russia expert Anton Bendarzhevsky said that Hungary supported Ukraine in every possible way except for delivering weapons. He added that the Orbán cabinet should separate communication and action. Moreover, Hungary will vote for Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO accession and the alliance knows that. However, Mr Vörös concluded that it still seems that Hungary is getting more isolated.
Government: Hungary not to support Ukraine’s integration as long as Hungarian schools at risk
Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó held talks with Ilze Brands Kheris, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights of the United Nations, in New York on Friday evening and told her that Hungary could not support Ukraine’s Transatlantic and European integration as long as ethnic Hungarian schools were “at risk” in the country, MTI wrote.
“While we are taking in refugee children from Ukraine in 1,300 schools and kindergartens in Hungary, there are 99 Hungarian primary and secondary schools in Ukraine that are at risk of being closed down because of the local education law,” Szijjártó said on Facebook. Several laws have been passed in Ukraine since 2015 that gradually infringed on the rights of the neighbouring country’s minorities to use their mother tongue, he said.
“Over the past eight years, Ukrainian authorities kept promising us to resolve this problem, but they have in fact done nothing to that effect,” the foreign minister said, adding that he informed the UN assistant secretary-general about Hungary’s position on Ukraine’s integration.
Source: mfor.hu, MTI