Hungarian FM Szijjártó: What is happening now shows that we were right

Hungary is ready for the “new age of global reality” and ready to do its fair share when it comes to making the world a better place again, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in New York on Tuesday.

The foreign ministry cited Szijjártó as telling an open debate at the United Nations’ Security Council meeting that the outcome of the US presidential election had changed “basically everything”, and the old Western world now had a new leader carrying out “a patriotic and sovereigntist strategy”, standing on the basis of common sense and going against “woke ideology and launching a freedom fight against the global dictatorship of the international liberal mainstream”.

He added that the Hungarian government had been doing this for the last 15 years by carrying out a conservative, Christian, pro-peace and anti-migration political strategy for which it had been under “tremendous attacks”.

He said “woke ideology” and the international liberal mainstream had poisoned international politics and international relations. He added that international politics had been totally lacking mutual respect, and “what we had instead was stigmatisation, lecturing and blackmailing”. “Therefore the last years have become the age of dangers and conflicts,” he said.

• Read also: Foreign Ministers of Hungary and China meet in New York

Szijjártó said that Hungarians had been living in the neighbourhood and the shadow of the war in Ukraine “which has put a lot of challenges ahead of us and caused a lot of harm and losses to our country”. “And we have to tell you that the international liberal mainstream has fuelled this conflict by stigmatising and attacking all of those who had been speaking in favour of peace,” he said.

“Therefore a special appreciation should go to those countries that have kept the pro-peace camp alive regardless of the tough circumstances,” he said, and cited China which established the Friends of Peace group during the last general assembly of the UN. Szijjártó said the US presidential election had brought “tremendous changes” in this case as well, with the election of a “pro-peace president”, adding that there was now greater hope than ever for the peaceful resolution of the war in Ukraine.