Hungary calls on Ukraine not to put Hungary’s energy supply at risk
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Budapest, March 17 (MTI) – Hungary will “naturally” maintain electricity and natural gas exports to Ukraine, but is justified in expecting Ukraine not to put Hungary’s energy supplies at risk, Péter Szijjártó, the minister of foreign affairs and trade, said after a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels on Monday.
The ministry said in a statement that Szijjártó, at a trilateral meeting with European Union and Ukraine representatives, said Hungary was the primary exporter of electricity to Ukraine last year. “Fully 39 percent of the Ukrainian electricity imports came from Hungary,” he said. This February, that ratio was 35 percent … while 42 percent of Ukraine’s natural gas imports also came through Hungary,” the minister added. “We will maintain those deliveries; we don’t want to cause even more hardship for the Ukrainian people.”
Szijjártó said that Hungary, at the same time, was justified in expecting Ukraine not to put Hungarian energy supplies at risk. In order to achieve that, “the energy infrastructure bringing gas or crude oil to Hungary must not be attacked,” he said. Szijjártó said Hungary would maintain that “entirely legitimate expectation” towards Ukraine and the European Commission, adding that the latter should “stand by European Union member states at least on this issue.”
“EU forcing path that’s ‘ruinous’ to bloc’s economy and security”
The European Union and the majority of member states have decided to follow a path that would bring “lasting ruin” to the continent’s economy and security, Szijjártó said in Brussels.
Szijjártó told a press conference that the meeting yet again had been “extremely pro-war and pro-Ukraine” in which many “blindly pushed for the continuation of the war and Ukraine’s almost immediate accession” to the EU. The minister said that the proposal under which the EU would spend 20 billion euros on arms shipments to Ukraine was “outrageous”, according to a ministry statement. Hungary would not take part in such an initiative, “as Hungary has a vested interest in peace that is approaching closer than ever”, he said.