Orbán cabinet did everything to stop Ukraine getting aided arms shipments, but failed

The Hungarian government has refused to contribute 6.5 billion euros of compensation to European Union member states that have shipped arms to Ukraine, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, said in Brussels on Monday.

Szijjártó told a press conference after a meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council that Hungary raised the sole veto to the payment of approximately 6.5 billion euros from the European Peace Facility to member states that have supplied weapons to Ukraine, thereby withholding around 77 million euros of Hungarian money. He added that neither Hungary supplied weapons nor contributed to the arms shipment. But if the other EU member states “want to do so voluntarily, Hungary will not stand in their way”, he said.

He added that Hungary will not give a nod to relocating an EU training mission coordination unit to Kyiv or the deployment of EU advisors to Kyiv to coordinate the reform of the Ukrainian security sector. Szijjártó said deploying people to Kyiv for the purposes of training, coordination, and advice as part of an EU program was “extremely risky” and risked escalation. Regarding the 15th sanctions package against Russia, which allows Hungarian oil and gas company MOL to export products derived from Russian crude oil, the minister called the exemption “important”. “As we managed to strip out the crazy ideas … we did not veto it in the end,” he said. Commenting on the attempt to put Patriarch Kirill on the sanctions list, he said punishing church leaders “should be avoided at all costs”, adding that all hopes for peace would be lost if lines of communication involving churches were cut.