Number of Hungarians who died in the war in Ukraine revealed

“We Hungarians are the only ones to have shed blood in that war, while those criticising us have not,” PM Viktor Orbán said yesterday in the 31st Bálványos summer university in Central Romania. “Therefore Hungary has the right, as a neighbouring country, to say that peace is the only solution. Peace is the only solution to save lives and the only antidote to wartime inflation and the economic crisis triggered by the war.”

Orbán highlighted that Hungarians were the only ones besides the Ukrainians who had “shed blood” in the war, citing official data indicating that 86 Hungarians have died in the conflict so far. Because of this, he added, Hungary had a right to say as a neighbouring country that peace was the only solution.

All wars can be examined from various points of view, but the main aspect of every war is that “mothers grieve for their children and children lose their parents,” he said, adding that this approach needed to be considered before all others even when it came to politics.

This, he said, meant that the Hungarian government’s main responsibility was to ensure that Hungarian parents and children are not put into such a situation.

• Read also: Orbán in Tusványos: Trump could have prevented the war in Ukraine!

At the same time, Orbán said, there were countries that were critical of Hungary, saying it was not committed enough to the Ukrainian side. “But they’re far away and at best they are providing weapons and financial support,” the prime minister said. “Meanwhile, we Hungarians are the only ones besides the Ukrainians who are dying in that war,” Orbán said, citing

official data indicating that 86 Hungarians have died in the war so far.

Hungary is a member of NATO and acts under the assumption “that Russia will never attack the much stronger alliance”, he said. Orban added, however, that Russia had found itself in a “delicate situation” after the EU had decided to impose severe economic sanctions on it and send weapons to Ukraine. “So, although not in a legal sense, but they are practically part of this conflict, which poses a huge risk,” he said.

Orbán said Russia had made it clear that it wanted it guaranteed that Ukraine would never join NATO, insisting that the war would not have broken out “if Donald Trump were the US president and Angela Merkel the German chancellor”.

• Read also: Hungary aids Ukraine grain deliveries

He said the West’s strategy had been based on the belief that Ukraine could win the war with “Anglo-Saxon training and weapons, that Western sanctions would destabilise the leadership in Moscow and that the West would be capable of managing the impact of the sanctions and enjoy the backing of the rest of the world. “But it’s the opposite of all this that’s happening right now,” he said.

“We’re sitting in a car with a puncture on all four tyres,”

he said, adding that when it came to the war, Europe needed a new strategy that aims not to win the war but to formulate “a good peace offer”.

“War is a game of strength, and those who are stronger get to decide,” Orban said. “It’s not worth cherishing the illusion that Hungary can influence the war and western strategy with excellent advice; but in every debate we must try to voice our standpoint and convince the West to develop a new strategy,” he said.

Orbán said the war had shaken the cooperation between Hungary and Poland in spite of the fact that the two countries shared the same strategic interests. Poland, he said, wanted to ensure that Russia did not advance westward and that Ukraine remains a sovereign democratic state. But whereas Hungary wants to stay out of the war between the two Slavic peoples, “the Poles feel that this is their war”, Orbán said, adding that Hungary and Poland should save what they could from their strategic alliance for the post-war era.

“It’s not the European Union’s job right now to stand either on the side of the Ukrainians or the Russians, but to stand between Ukraine and Russia,”

he said. “What’s happening right now will only serve to prolong the war,” Orbán said. Russia wants to advance far enough west so that Ukraine cannot strike Russian territory, he said, arguing that the better weapons Ukraine gets, the longer the war could go on.

The prime minister said that peace would depend on negotiations between Russia and the US. Europe “played its hand” in attempting to influence the events in 2014, when the Minsk accords were brokered without the US, and then were not enforced. “So, the Russians don’t want to talk to us anymore but to those who can get Ukraine to comply with the agreement,” he said.