Protesters rally in solidarity with Ukraine in Budapest – PHOTOS

Protesters rallied in support of a free and independent Ukraine and against what they called the Hungarian government’s “shuttlecock policy”, in downtown Budapest on Saturday. The demonstration was organised by a civil group supporting ukrainian independence at the call of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Budapest’s Szabadsajtó (Freedom of the Press) Road.

Péter Juhász, one of the organisers, said that while civil groups were showing solidarity towards refugees and were doing everything they could for them, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian government “hasn’t done anything”. “So civilians are the heart of Hungary,” Juhász said. “Orbán, on the other hand, is not the heart of Hungary but rather its sticky hand, and that sticky hand is now also a bloody hand”.

“We mustn’t allow this because the world will think that we’re the same as Viktor Orbán,”

Juhász said.

Pro-Ukraine protest in Budapest1
Photo: MTI/Bruzák Noémi

Historian Krisztián Ungváry said Orbán’s position on the war meant the prime minister believed that ideas like national self-determination, liberty and the fight for freedom only mattered if they concerned the ruling Fidesz party. Ungváry said Ukraine was defending not just itself but the whole of Europe.

Pro-Ukraine protest in Budapest1
Historian Krisztián Ungváry. Photo: MTI/Bruzák Noémi

“Ukraine today is also fighting against the regime of Viktor Orbán because Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin are brothers,” he said. “They both reject Western democracy, and are building an illiberal state in its place.”

Kata Törley, a teacher and an activist of the Tanítanék (I Want to Teach) Movement, expressed respect for Ukrainian women and mothers in Ukraine and Russia.

She said the government was not giving the education the extra resources it needed to teach Ukrainian refugee children.

Nika Krykun and Arseniy Markov, two Ukarinian students who appeared in the award-winning Ukrainian coming-of-age drama Stop-Zemlia, shared their personal stories with the demonstrators. Markov said

the Russian soldiers in Ukraine would “not make it home alive” for which they “have Putin to thank”.

Krykun said she would “never forgive the aggressors” for the nighmares her younger brother has because of Russian gunshots.

Pro-Ukraine protest in Budapest1
Photo: MTI/Bruzák Noémi

The demonstrators waved Ukrainian flags and held up signs that read “Stop Putin” and “Save Ukraine”. The demonstration was preceded by a peaceful march by Ukrainian mothers who have fled to Hungary.

Csaba Dömötör, a state secretary of the cabinet ministry, said the demonstration was

“further proof that the left wants to drag Hungary into war”.

In a statement to MTI, Domotor said that “people close” to opposition prime ministerial candidate Peter Márki-Zay had also spoken at the event. “It is clear they want to comply with the Ukrainian president’s requests and send weapons to the battlefield, and they would close the gas taps,” the statement said.

That would mean that Hungarian families would pay the price of war,

he said. Dömötör noted that Hungary had condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine, and has expressed its concerns regarding Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and has pledged to help everyone in trouble.

“But the Russia-Ukraine war is not our war. We didn’t cause it and do not want to take part in it,”

he said. “There is no prosperity without security. The country can only be built further if we preserve security,” he said.

Source: MTI

3 Comments

  1. https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2022/04/peter-hitchens-the-usa-wants-this-war-so-it-can-drive-russia-back-to-the-stone-age.html
    02 April 2022 11:25 PM
    PETER HITCHENS: The USA wants this war… so it can drive Russia back to the Stone Age

    This is Peter Hitchens’ Mail on Sunday column

    This is not a war between Ukraine and Russia. It is a war between the USA and Russia, in which both sides are cynically using Ukraine as a battering ram.

    The people of Ukraine will gain nothing and lose much from being treated in this way. They fight and die or lose their homes and flee. We pour in more weapons and shout encouragement from a safe distance. Russia wrecks the joint.

    What Ukraine actually needs is action to cure its festering, universal corruption. It would also benefit from the pushing to the margins of the ultra-nationalist fanatics who have far too much influence in its government and armed forces. The war will make these problems worse, not better.

    As I once again find myself on the despised, hated and reviled side of the argument, I might as well do this properly. These are very cynical events indeed. I am sorry to say that there are people in the USA who will not be sad if this war drags on.

    A ‘senior diplomat’ was quoted on Friday, by a commentator with ready access to the great and the good, as saying: ‘If you look at all the options, our strategic interest is probably best served in a long war, a quagmire that drains Putin militarily and economically so he cannot do this again.’

    This is no doubt true. Since the American neo-conservative politician Paul Wolfowitz set out his ‘doctrine’ in 1992, Washington has wanted to crush any revival of Russian power. The flaw with this scheme is that it was, in fact, China that was the threat, not Russia. But there you are. Mr Wolfowitz, a keen backer of the disastrous Iraq war, is not as clever as he thinks he is.

    It is this policy which explains the otherwise mad expansion of Nato, against the warnings of every qualified expert in the world. It also explains the taunting of Russia by President George W. Bush’s 2008 suggestion that Ukraine should actually join Nato. This came just a year after Vladimir Putin, still more or less open to reason, said very clearly that he’d had enough and that Nato expansion should stop. Then, of course, came the events of 2014, in which the USA openly backed a mob putsch which overthrew Ukraine’s legitimate President Viktor Yanukovych. More responsible nations, including France, Germany and Poland, tried to broker a peaceful, lawful path…………

  2. Well done on the protest, many people support what you are doing. We have to stand up for what we believe in.
    The government uses its brainwashing propaganda till the end……..

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