Hungarian government ‘not to give in to pressure’ on financing weapon deliveries to Ukraine

The Hungarian government expects “great pressure” concerning a proposal to finance additional weapon deliveries to Ukraine at an informal meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Toledo on Thursday, but it will “not give in before its conditions are met”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said.

The foreign ministry quoted Szijjártó as saying before leaving for Spain that Josep Borrell, high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security, had requested to meet him one on one or joined by Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, to discuss Hungary’s approval to “sending further tens of billions of euros to Ukraine”.

“Naturally, we will not give in to the pressure today, either. Until we are not provided a detailed and clear account of what they have spent on some 50-70 billion euros sent to Ukraine so far and as long as OTP bank is not removed from Ukraine’s so-called sponsors of war list approving financing weapons or anything else for Ukraine is out of the question,” Szijjártó said.

He said “asking Hungary to send taxpayers’ money to Ukraine while keeping the largest Hungarian bank on the list of war sponsors … is nonsensical”.

Szijjártó said he expected that “everybody will talk about war” and he would be the only participant “to talk about peace”. He called for “amplifying the voice of peace because it is clear that each day and each weapons shipment increases the danger of escalation.” “Each day of the war and each weapon sent to Ukraine claims lives and we are working to prevent that,” he said.

The minister said the recent military coup in Gabon would be on the meeting’s agenda. “Each coup like that involves the threat of instability … which could easily result in further waves of migration,” he insisted. “This is why the EU … should start speaking clearly, and leave behind a pro-migration policy, making clear that one can only enter Europe legally.”

Maintaining the current migration policy could result in “such pressure on Europe that will be extremely difficult to tackle and will require enormous efforts from countries protecting the external borders of the EU,” he said.

Source: MTI