John Mearsheimer, world-renowned US political scientist and scholar of international relations, in a talk on Tuesday said in Budapest that the war in Ukraine had been provoked by the United States and the West by mooting Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership.
In his lecture at the National University of Public Service, Mearsheimer said that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response had been to launch a war to prevent Ukraine’s NATO membership and thwart the West’s plan to use Ukraine as a base against his country.
He said Hungary was manoeuvring “wisely” between those two sides, motivated by its interest in maintaining its military and economic ties within NATO as a member of the western alliance while having no interest at all in provoking a country close to its borders. Neither is it in Hungary’s interest that economic ties between Russia and the EU be cut, the professor said.
Mearsheimer said the US had an interest in weakening China, its main rival, and will exert pressure on Europe, and Hungary, in an effort to prevent the strengthening of their economic ties with that country.
In his talk, Balázs Orbán, the political director of the Prime Minister’s Office, said Brussels had an official pro-war stance despite the fact that continuing the war in Ukraine was not in its interest. “In this situation, Hungary, similarly to Pope Francis, Elon Musk and Henry Kissinger, is calling for peace,” he said.
Even though it is not a member of the EU, Serbia is still seriously affected by the EU sanctions against Russia. That is because it could indirectly find itself in a situation where its oil imports are blocked. Thus, the country’s leadership is trying to ease Serbia’s 100 percent dependence on oil and gas from Russian sources. In this, the energy cooperation that has started between Hungary and Serbia could play a major role.
The country is in a tight spot because it is vulnerable to the indirect impact of EU sanctions against Russia. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, in an interview with the Financial Times, described a number of initiatives to end Serbia’s dependence on Russian energy. Among these, energy cooperation with Hungary could play a prominent role, napi.hu writes.
“It’s crazy that we didn’t think about the regional interconnection of energy infrastructure before,” said the Serbian head of state, “we didn’t prepare for the war in Europe, which will change everything.” In recent years, Serbia has imported all its gas and half of its oil from Russia. Now, however, it is the case that, due to the entry into force of the EU oil import embargo, from December, oil from Russian sources cannot be shipped from Croatia to Serbia.
In addition, unless Brussels makes an exception to the restrictions on Russian ownership, NIS (the Serbian oil company) will not be allowed to do business with European companies. The end of the story may be that it will have to close shop after receiving its entire oil supply via Croatia through the Adriatic pipeline.
MOL might be able to help Serbia with this. According to three sources familiar with the situation, several groups considered buying a majority stake in Gazpromneft’s majority owner, Financial Times writes. These include the Serbian government and Hungarian energy company MOL. However, negotiations on a sale have stalled. MOL did not wish to comment on the issue.
Vucic says they should consider all options, including alternative sources of oil, but if the restriction on ownership comes into force, it will cause serious problems. If NIS is isolated in the market, they will intervene, but they are not there yet. Vucic held separate talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on the possibility of Hungarian-Serbian energy cooperation.
According to the Russian President, Poland, Romania and Hungary could even have territorial claims against Ukraine. The first two countries were fast to react to Putin’s harsh words and refuted them right away. Hungary, however, was not so fast and firm.
As we reported earlier today, Vladimir Putin said that Poland, Romania and Hungary ceded territory to Ukraine by force. He added that they have still not given up their desire to take parts of Ukraine and reclaim previously annexed territories.
Romania’s reaction
The Romanian Foreign Ministry reacted to Vladimir Putin’s words in a press statement a day later, on 5 November. As they wrote, “the Romanian Foreign Ministry rejects the statements made in the speech of the President of the Russian Federation on the occasion of the Day of National Unity, which falsely imply that Romania has territorial claims against Ukraine”, Index writes.
“In this context, Romania reaffirms its strong support for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders,” concluded the Romanian Foreign Ministry.
Poland’s reaction
Új Magyar Szó reports that Poland has accused the Russian president of spreading disinformation because of his speech. “He spoke about rumours and fake news that are completely untrue,” Warsaw reacted to Vladimir Putin’s statements.
The Hungarian government did not comment for a while, but today, Index reached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In response to their inquiry, they said:
“We do not consider statements deepening the war conflict to be correct. Instead of such statements, we need an immediate ceasefire and peace talks!”
According to Russian intelligence, Poland has prepared a plan to regain its annexed territories from Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently made a reference to Polish efforts. Hungary was also mentioned.
According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, some countries, including Poland, have still not given up their desire to take parts of Ukraine and reclaim previously annexed territories.
“We know the vision of some of the Polish political elite to create a great country “from sea to sea”. Before the Second World War, there was a lot of talk about this idea. Now we see the leaders of Poland and Ukraine embracing each other. But the edge, the idea of annexing Ukraine, has not gone away,” said the Russian leader at a meeting to mark the 10th anniversary of the re-establishment of the Russian Historical and Military Historical Societies, Index.hu writes.
The Russian president says that there is talk in Warsaw that Ukraine should be given back the territories it took from Poland in 1939. At the same time, some historical Russian territories were ceded to Ukraine during the Soviet era, but this was done on a voluntary basis, according to the Russian President, in order to “create a common cultural, humanitarian and historical space”.
“These territories were forcibly ceded by Hungary, Romania and Poland. These are completely different situations. We voluntarily, in order to be together, handed over historical territories together with the population, although nobody asked the population, whereas in Poland, as a result of the war, they were taken away by force. Some people in Ukraine should think about this,” added the Russian head of state, according to the Russian state news agency TASZSZ.
In July, the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, reported that the Polish leadership had begun working on scenarios for the de facto partition of Ukraine. According to him, Warsaw is convinced that the United States and Britain will be forced to support this plan.
As Naryshkin noted, this is an attempt to repeat for Poland the historic “deal” made after the First World War, when the Entente-represented West recognised Warsaw’s right to occupy part of Ukraine. Poland was then prepared to protect its population from the ‘Bolshevik threat’ and then incorporate these territories into the Polish state.
European Union sanctions against Russia have produced high inflation, an energy crisis and the threat of a European recession, László Kövér, the speaker of parliament, said on Saturday.
Kövér said Europe had willed itself into an economic war, and the government’s chief task was to make sure a European recession on the horizon did not weigh down Hungary’s economy.
Speaking in Békés County, in south-eastern Hungary, on the latest leg of his nationwide tour, the speaker said that whereas they had been “trying to convince Hungary” for a decade that “the Russians are unreliable partners”, Russian had not weaponised gas but instead the European Commission had tried to “turn it against them through sanctions”.
He said, however, that Hungary’s gas supplies were secure for the time being, and gas storage was sufficient to cover 60-70 percent of annual needs.
Hungary, Kövér noted, had condemned Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine from the very beginning, adding that the national interest was for Ukraine to be independent, democratic and prosperous. Meanwhile, the Hungarian minority there should also be allowed to prosper without facing discrimination, he added.
The speaker said there were reports of a ninth EU sanctions package under way with a view to broadening the restrictions to nuclear energy. Hungary’s sole nuclear power plant can only operate with Russian fuel rods, he noted, adding that sanctions on nuclear energy would be a “disaster” both for Hungarian households and industry.
Hungary can only support nuclear sanctions if the country is exempted from them, he said. Kövér, who is also the head of the ruling Fidesz party’s national board, insisted that the Hungarian left wing was financed by George Soros and had “sided with sanctions and the war”.
The speaker said there was no democratic mandate for decisions being passed in Europe today, and no attempts had been made to consult ordinary people about migration or “whether they wanted to pay the price of the sanctions”. Kövér said the government’s National Consultation survey would help the Hungarian government when it came to protecting national interests in Brussels.
Activists held an awareness-raising action in front of the Hungarian Embassy in Warsaw. They tried to pull an Orbán dummy out of the behind of a Putin dummy.
Polish activists prepared a spectacular action in front of the Hungarian Embassy in Warsaw: they tried to pull a Viktor Orbán puppet out of the buttocks of a puppet of Vladimir Putin.
The performance was intended to show their condemnation of the Hungarian prime minister’s pro-Russian policies and his dealings with Russia at the cost of human values, Telex reports.
“Today, the whole European Union is supporting Ukraine, and Orbán is the only one openly supporting a terrorist. We Poles, Europeans, do not agree with this! We used to come here to the embassy to appeal to the Hungarian government, but now we don’t want to negotiate with them. Today we are appealing to the Hungarian people and saying: ‘Support Ukraine with us! Stand up against Orbán!” said Polish activist Dominik Dąsiorowski and Leroy Merlin, leader of the all-Polish boycott.
“Thousands of people have been killed, tortured to death, burned alive, children raped, millions of people’s homes destroyed – all this is the merit of terrorist Russia, and all this with the support of the Hungarian government. We are against this! That’s why we are here!” said Dmitro Lichman, the creator of the dummy of Orbán trapped in Putin, szmo.hu writes.
The Euromaidan-Warszawa Facebook page also published pictures and a video of the action:
The current situation on the global political stage poses serious danger to the world unless common sense prevails, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told an international conference in Tangier, Morocco, on Friday.
The East and the West should therefore reopen their communication channels, Szijjártó told a panel discussion at the MEDays Forum, according to a foreign ministry statement, adding that communication had often been enough to avert another world war during the Cold War. Hungary considers 2022 “the year of big disappointments”, Szijjártó said. He said the “legitimate expectation” that the end of the coronavirus pandemic would be followed by a less difficult period had turned out to be a “naive illusion” because a war had broken out in Ukraine.
Szijjártó urged the reopening of communication channels in the interest of settling the conflict. “Because if the communications channels are given up, then the hope for peace is being given up as well,” he said. The minister said the Cold War had been better in this respect because the opposing sides had been in constant communication. “We Hungarians really do try to maintain dialogue with the Russians, but whenever we do so, we always are faced with enormous unfair and vehement attacks” labelling the country “the spies of Putin, the allies of the Russians, the breakers of European unity”, Szijjártó said, adding that Hungary only wanted to maintain communication.
Szijjártó said those who believed the war could end with talks between Ukraine and Russia were “naive”, arguing that dialogue between Russia and the United States was needed. He said everything must be done to avoid a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, arguing that such a conflict could lead to a third world war.
Szijjártó said the Cold War had been “terrible” for Central Europe, adding that the current global political situation carried similar threats “unless common sense can prevail and the voice of those who want peace will become louder”. He said that as a neighbouring country of Ukraine, Hungary had a vested interest in peace also because Europe was facing increasingly serious economic problems which were being aggravated by the European Union’s “failed sanctions”.
He argued that the sanctions had failed to live up to expectations because the war was becoming increasingly brutal while the European economy had spiralled into crisis. Because Hungary does not want to get dragged into the war, it has decided against delivering weapons to Ukraine and is the only EU country not taking part in the bloc’s mission to train Ukrainian troops, he said. “Of course, for these two decisions of ours we are under very, very heavy and severe attacks on a daily basis politically and media-wise as well,” Szijjártó said. “The voice of escalation is much louder than the voice of peace.”
Hungary has already had a rather unfavourable deal with Russia back in August when it purchased gas at a price 12 percent higher than the benchmark exchange price two months earlier. However, this fact contradicts an earlier statement issued by Minister of Economic Development Márton Nagy.
Ever-increasing gas prices
Contrary to the earlier statement of the Minister of Economic Development, Márton Nagy, the Russian gas price did not follow the stock market price of one month but two months earlier. Népszava found this out on the basis of the updated foreign trade database of the Central Statistical Office. The two arcs almost coincide with a delay of at least two months.
The small difference is not so minor. Since January, Vladimir Putin has been charging Hungary more and more for fuel, even by stock market standards.
In February, Márton Nagy said that Hungary purchased its fuel at a fifth of the world market price. However, in reality, we were charged 30 percent more than its stock market value. The Orbán government refuses to reveal the official price, but the KSH data gave an accurate estimate.
The Hungarian government has claimed that the Hungarian-Russian gas contract signed in October 2021 would provide the gas needed to maintain the cuts. After the elections, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán admitted that the price followed the stock market. At the time, Orbán said that it was not the price but the availability of fuel that was important.
The government officials declined to disclose the data supporting their allegations, citing the confidentiality of the contract. The two-month delay means Hungary will have to pay horrendously high gas bills between September and December, 24.hu reports.
By August, the average exchange price per thousand cubic metres was EUR 2,305, far exceeding all previous levels. Therefore, during the storage period in October, Hungary was transferring hundreds of millions of euros to Moscow.
According to Népszava, this is the reason for extra profit taxes, the August residential gas tax hike and the payment rescheduling agreement between the Hungarian-Russian state gas trader in early October.
MEP Márton Gyöngyösi’s (Non-attached) thoughts via press release:
It’s been a long time since the dawn of Hungary’s post-Communist democratization, when former Communist Youth member and newly-Liberal Viktor Orbán landed in our political life clinging with both hands to the memory of 1956. By now however, Orbán’s regime has become so subservient to Vladimir Putin that they would rather forget the revolution against the Soviet Union. What a stark contrast it is with the Ukrainian army’s ethnic Hungarian soldiers who just liberated villages and towns from Russian occupation the other day.
The still uncensored part of the Hungarian internet has featured some special photos recently: the Ukrainian army’s ethnic Hungarian soldiers proudly posing with the symbol of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, the flag with a hole in it, standing in the main square of a town just liberated from Russian occupation. The warriors’ message is clear: they consider themselves as the successors of the freedom fighters of 1956, and they struggle against Moscow’s tyranny as their spiritual predecessors did. And they do so quite successfully as the Transcarpathian Hungarian volunteers have been actively involved in the Ukrainian military successes of the past few weeks.
Meanwhile in Budapest, the Fidesz government, which used to run campaigns of anti-Communism and heightened nationalism, was going through its most embarrassing days ever.
Although the commemorations of October 23 had been considered for many years as the political highlight of the season for Viktor Orbán’s supporters, who had been transported by buses to Budapest so they could listen to their leader’s latest guidelines in the highest numbers possible, everything changed this year. The central state celebration was so insignificant that it wasn’t even featured in the news, and Viktor Orbán decided to flee to the country to deliver his speech at an event hidden from the public.
Why? Because Orbán, who climbed in the Hungarian political arena on the memory of 1956, now finds it embarrassing to reflect on the Hungarians who took up arms against the Russian occupation.
His regime has increasingly been relying on Putin’s Russia, and Orbán has been professing his faith in such Russian propaganda claims as Ukraine is “not even a country” or there’s “no defence” against weaponized Russian energy other than submitting to it.
October 23 of 2022 was the day when Orbán’s immorality was exposed for the whole world to see. The politician who, quite recently, was such a fervent anti-Communist, no longer dares to even address the crimes of Communism, because many of his supporters actually love Putin more than him, while he himself worships the Russian propaganda with just about as much passion as they do.
The question is: how long will the European Union keep allowing this man to partake in joint decisions and when will its leaders finally realize that Orbán’s and his ministers’ presence in the EU’s decision-making processes is just as if they let Putin or Sergei Lavrov sit at the table?
On October 23 this year, Orbán and his party completed their symbolic divorce from Europe. It’s high time European politicians finally realized the truth and started working out the details of how to sanction Orbán and his partners in crime.
Disclaimer: the sole liability for the opinions stated rests with the author(s). These opinions do not necessarily reflect the official position of the European Parliament.
In one year, the number of Russian diplomats in Hungary has increased by 30 percent. More and more EU countries are expelling Russian diplomats because of the invasion of Ukraine. Some people even go as far as speculating whether Russian diplomats could serve as intelligence agents.
More Russian diplomats in Hungary
The data compiled by Direkt36 journalist Szabolcs Panyi shows that the number of Russian diplomats in Hungary has increased by 30 percent in a year. The opposite trend can be observed among European Union countries, where the number of Russian diplomats is decreasing due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
The Hungarian opposition protested against the war in March with a crossed-out portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The venue was the International Investment Bank, where two Russian executives are registered as diplomats.
“The Hungarian government is visibly refraining from any gesture that would alienate Russia, and it is in line with this trend that we are not banning Russian diplomats,” Panyi told RTL news.
At the end of November 2021, 46 Russian diplomats were serving in Hungary, rising to 62 in October this year. According to Szabolcs Panyi’s collection, there are 35 Russian diplomats in London, 20 in Warsaw and 15 in Bratislava.
According to József Kis Benedek, a security policy expert and former military intelligence officer, some diplomats are likely to be engaged in intelligence gathering in addition to their public mission.
“Based on my experience, I can say that the number of Russian diplomats is quite high in the country, so about 60-70 percent of them may be tied to conducting some kind of intelligence service,” he said.
According to Péter Krekó, Director of Political Capital, some of the Russian diplomats are aiming to influence the political climate in their country. “In Greece, for example, these diplomats have been working to try to shift the political climate in the name dispute between North Macedonia and Greece in the most extreme direction and against the agreement. Or in Serbia, Russian diplomats were expelled because of suspicions that they might have been involved in an assassination attempt against Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic,” said Péter Kreko.
The right-wing chairman of the National Security Committee will ask the heads of the secret services about the increase in the number of Russian diplomats at the next meeting of the committee, 24.hu reports.
Orbán told public broadcaster Kossuth Rádió yesterday that Ukraine was a dysfunctional state, unable to run its economy already before the war, 444.hu wrote. Therefore, he said, Ukraine would need around 5 billion euros a month to avoid a collapse, adding that the question was who would give them this money.
Talks are ongoing about how the burden should be shared by Europe and the United States, he said. The discussions are also focused on how the burdens should be distributed among EU member states if Europe contributes to aiding Ukraine and whether even everyone wants to contribute, he added.
Hungary will have to decide whether to participate in that process, Orbán said. Hungary is facing difficult decisions, including “whether we have money to give to the Ukrainians, and in what form we should give it: together with the others, separately, as a donation or a loan”, he said. This will only become clear over the next two to three months of EU talks, he added.
There is a “temporary lull” in the growth of gas prices, after European reserves have been refilled over the summer, Hungary’s prime minister added. Prices are expected to grow again as EU countries start to use their reserves in the winter, he said.
Hungary has concluded long-term contracts with Russia to ensure gas supplies, he said. Although the NordStream pipeline “was ruined by terrorist attacks”, the pipeline arriving in Europe via Turkey is still intact, “and Hungary won’t allow anyone to ruin this pipeline.”
The price of Russian gas is tied to European stock exchange prices, and so high European prices drive price growth in Hungary, he said. Orbán slammed the European Union’s sanctions against Russia, saying that Europe was paying a “sanctions surcharge” for energy. Hungary is “mostly successful” in avoiding the consequences of those bad decisions, he said, “but we are on the same market as all other European countries, and Hungary suffers to some degree from the deteriorating situation there. That is why we are against the sanctions,” he said.
Sanctions were originally introduced as a tool to end the war swiftly and to punish Russia for launching the war, he said. “We made a plan and dug a hole for the Russians, but ended up falling into it ourselves,” he said. “The EU is now proposing to dig further, while Hungary is saying we should try to get out.” Those two stances clash at every EU summit, he added.
The prime minister said the latest National Consultation public survey on sanctions imposed in response to the Russia-Ukraine war “is important to help everyone realise we are all in danger”.
The belief that talks between Russia and Ukraine can end the war between the two countries is a “naive illusion”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Thursday, adding that US-Russia talks were needed to end the conflict.
In order for such talks to take place, however, it would be important for the leaders of the United States and Russia to meet at the upcoming G20 summit in Indonesia, the foreign ministry cited Szijjártó as saying ahead of a meeting between the foreign ministers of the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Buenos Aires.
“If they’re already in the same place, I think it would be very hard to explain to anyone on Earth why they weren’t meeting with each other,” Szijjártó said. “We understand that protocol is important, we understand that it’s important for everyone to make themselves seem strong, stronger than the other. But there are hundreds of thousands dying, millions fleeing, the whole world has been thrust into crisis and this regional war . must be prevented from escalating into a world war.”
Though the conflict in Ukraine is a regional one, it has serious negative effects for the whole world, the minister said.
“The world’s energy supply is in crisis, as is the food supply of many areas,” Szijjártó said. “Inflation is sky-high all over the world, economies are sliding into recession and millions of jobs are at risk.” The entire world’s interest lies in ending this war as soon as possible, Szijjártó said. “However, we are concerned to see that
certain big and powerful countries, certain large and strong international organisations constantly engage in war rhetoric,”
he said. “And their remarks and decisions are pushing this war more towards escalation than towards peace.” “It’s time for the major international players to make decisions that promote peace rather than escalation,” Szijjártó said, urging international players to refrain from making decisions that would further aggravate the situation.
Szijjártó is scheduled to hold talks with his Argentine, Costa Rican, Ecuadorian, Guatemalan, Jamaican, Colombian, Nicaraguan and Panamanian counterparts on the sidelines of the EU-CELAC meeting.
“Whoever was behind the Brussels sanctions launched because of the war in Ukraine, the person is Russia’s best friend as the European Union has not hurt Russia but itself by way of those measures,” the prime minister’s chief of staff told Swiss weekly Weltwoche.
Concerning criticism by the European press and politicians in Brussels over the Hungarian government’s attitude towards the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Gergely Gulyás said “Hungary is not Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Trojan horse” in an interview published on Thursday.
“Such accusations are the worst propaganda,” Gulyás said, and stressed Hungary condemned Russia’s aggression against Ukraine just as all other EU member states. Hungary has launched an aid programme to support 1.2 million Ukrainian refugees, it supports Ukraine financially and has also backed the EU’s sanctions against Russia, he added.
He also said, however, that “Russia has earned (on energy) this year twice as much as last year”, adding that “through its sanctions, the West contributes to financing Russia’s aggression”. He called for a “European debate” to be held as soon as possible to determine the EU’s policy concerning the war in Ukraine. “What the community needs is intelligent sanctions that would hurt Russia rather than Europe,” Gulyás said.
Lt. Col. István Belovai was initially employed by the Hungarian Strategic Military Intelligence Service in the ’70s-80s, however, he soon decided to change sides and began serving the Americans as a double agent. Known also as TheRat among his colleagues, the most famous Hungarian CIA agent caused incomprehensible damage to the Hungarian Intelligence Service. Belovai never admitted the charges, moreover, in his autobiography he considered himself to have played an important role in preventing the breakout of the Third World War and exposing the biggest espionage operation ever perpetrated against NATO.
Belovai first saw the light of day in a tiny sleepy village in Hungary’s Southern Great Plain region in 1938. Little did his father knew, who worked as a simple rope manufacturer, that his son would become the most notorious double agent in the country and reach even the shores of the New Land. After elementary school, he spent a couple of years helping out on their family’s farm before he was called in for military service. Due to his outstanding performance, he was referred by his commander to join a two-year officer-candidate programme which he completed with flying colours. He was a natural at learning languages and already mastered English and Italian before graduating from the Zrínyi Miklós Military Academy in 1973. Following that year, his career was shooting straight up, like a rocket ship.
According to Belovai’s memoir, the idea of joining the CIA already started forming in his head in the late seventies, however, he had to wait a few years to go through with his plan. It all began when in the summer of 1975, top secret NATO material started flowing to his desk from West Germany, which included NATO battle plans, detailed descriptions of nuclear weapon locations and movements of troops, aircraft and tanks. Belovai’s decision to join the opposition forces was prompted by his realisation that this immense amount of confidential documents the Hungarian Intelligence came to access was all bound to be passed on to the Soviets. Through the pages of his autobiography, he expressed his fear of a possible outbreak of a Third World War.
“The Soviets had the vital information needed, and were preparing for a successful attack against the West. The result would have been capitulation or a nuclear response. I wanted to prevent this”.
Belovai first got in contact with the CIA in 1982 while working in London as a military attaché and intelligence officer at the Hungarian Embassy. The Hungarian agent said that he had Hungary’s interest in mind the whole time when he decided to inform the Americans about the activities of the infamous Conrad spy ring, one of the most damaging espionage operations ever against NATO. They hand-delivered more than 30,000 top-secret materials to the communist governments of Hungary and Chechoslovakia, which then directly made their way to Moscow and the Soviet KGB. Belovai was first in line to translate and evaluate the documents that identified and exposed the perpetrators.
Source: Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára FB
Source: Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára FB
However, he could not celebrate his success as he was arrested by counterintelligence in 1985 while picking up a CIA container at Keleti Railway Station during one of his visits to Hungary. It turned out that Hungarian Intelligence already opened an investigation against him on the suspicion of state treachery, the year before. Apart from uncovering the Conrad case, Belovai also reported to the CIA on his colleagues working as official or covert agents at the London-based Military Intelligence Station. Besides, he also willingly handed over all the names of the Hungarian Intelligence and other top confidential information regarding the state’s internal affairs to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Despite his heroic act of exposing the biggest spy operation threatening NATO, back in his country, the colonel was deemed a traitor and a common criminal by Hungarian authorities. The military court sentenced him to life imprisonment for high treason and the most serious act of espionage ever perpetrated against the Hungarian state. Surprisingly, he was released by former liberal Hungarian President Árpád Göncz in 1990. Upon his departure from prison, he got hold of information that the Hungarian Interior Ministry initially argued for a death sentence at his trial. Concerned for his safety, he fled to the States and settled down in Denver, Colorado where he spent the rest of his years until his death in 2009. Even though the US government granted him a colonel pension, he was never pardoned by the Hungarian state. Until his last days, Belovai refused the accusations of betraying his own native land.
“I was never a traitor. I was Hungary’s first NATO soldier,”
said the late colonel in a ’98 interview. After the end of the communist regime, Hungary rethought its foreign policy and began contemplating the idea of joining NATO. The country’s journey to becoming a fully integrated member was long and complicated though given the fact that it took nearly 10 years. Hungary officially became a NATO member on 12 March 1999.
The European Commission has “clearly not learnt from its recent mistakes” and refuses to face reality, yet the measures introduced by Brussels have only deepened the energy crisis, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó said in Luxembourg on Tuesday.
The ministry cited Szijjártó telling a press conference after the European Union energy affairs ministers’ meeting that it was most important to stay alert in the weeks to come when the EC drafts and submits concrete proposals.
The EC plans to “make another concealed attempt” to reduce member states’ powers and “sneakily expand” its own powers, he said.
“Hungary insists that decisions in matters connected to energy supplies should require the unanimous approval of all member states,” Szijjártó said. The security of energy supplies is a priority for the government, which will nor approve any proposal that would even slightly reduce it, he added.
“We believe the good and genuine long-term solution would be to flood the European market with natural gas,” he said. “The EC should help to ensure that natural gas arrives from as many sources as possible and through as many routes as possible,” he added.
Szijjártó said the government maintained “red lines” in six matters. The first one is that setting up a common gas acquisition platform should be done on a voluntary basis only, he said. Hungary refuses to participate in common acquisitions of any kind, he added.
Measures related to a price cap must not influence long-term contracts in any way, he said.
Commenting on the solidarity mechanism, Szijjártó rejected the possibility that natural gas purchased from Hungarian taxpayers’ money and stored in Hungary should be offered to other countries.
“European bureaucrats and quite a few other countries are juggling to banish Russian natural gas from European markets … but in case of an emergency they would accept it from Hungarian reserves,” he said.
Szijjártó also said that Hungary’s experiences were not necessarily the same as western European experiences in terms of which suppliers were reliable. Russia’s Gazprom has been reliably supplying the contracted volumes while two western companies have let Hungary down in connection with extraction from the Black Sea gas fields in Romania, he added.
Szijjártó said that unlike the successful Hungarian decisions connected to gas acquisition and storage, Brussels’ measures have so far “only caused problems and dangers for European energy supplies”. It follows that the Hungarian government does not support handing over national powers.
“We will stand on our guard in the weeks to come to make sure that no decision is made that could threaten Hungarian energy supplies, go against the European Council’s decision, or take away powers from us to hand them over to Brussels,” he said.
Lawmakers on Monday voted to allow the government to request emergency powers in relation to defence and security to be extended from the current 30 days to a maximum of 180 days from Nov. 1.
The vote which also authorises such emergency powers to be granted multiple times was carried with 142 in favour, 31 against and 6 abstentions.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on May 24 declared emergency powers in Hungary in response to the Russia-Ukraine war.
MEP Márton Gyöngyösi’s (Non-attached) thoughts via press release:
Apart from Putin’s lackeys, European political leaders have very correctly realized that the best way to stop Russia is to isolate it economically and technologically. While the effectiveness of European sanctions has become increasingly clear however, it is also true that the widest possible international cooperation is still missing, and the Ukraine war is still going on.
Although Europe’s sanctions on Moscow are now significantly disrupting everyday life in Russia as well, we must keep in mind that the primary aim is to reduce Russia’s military capabilities and not to make it impossible for Russian citizens to live their lives.
That’s why I was so perplexed to hear about the initiatives to make it harder for Russian nationals to travel into Europe, for example.
In the meantime, we can all see how China, Iran or India continue to participate in not only economic but military-related cooperation projects with Russia. Of course, the technology obtained from these partners is not comparable to Western assets in terms of quality and development level, but when the Russian army is using Iranian drones to attack Ukrainian cities, we simply cannot ignore this phenomenon.
I believe it’s time for Europe to put pressure not only on Russia, but on everybody else who cooperates with Putin’s state.
Any sanction that can be bypassed is no real sanction. Speaking at the European Parliament’s plenary session, I proposed to extend the restrictions to every person or company that provides Russia with such services that Europe doesn’t allow any of its own economic and military entities to supply to Russia.
This is the only way to achieve our real goal: ending the war. In order for that to happen, we need to break Russia’s military capabilities.
Disclaimer: the sole liability for the opinions stated rests with the author(s). These opinions do not necessarily reflect the official position of the European Parliament.
Zoltán Sz. Bíró, a Russia expert, was the guest on the Friderikusz podcast and talked about the anti-Russia sanctions and the communication of the government and PM Orbán concerning that issue. He said that what Orbán did after the Bucha massacre shows that the Hungarian prime minister is no longer a “free man” concerning Russia.
According to szmo.hu, Sándor Friderikusz, the podcast’s host, was curious why Orbán communicates in a “putinish” way. Mr Sz. Bíró said he thought for a long while that the Hungarian prime minister believed that provided he maintains a good relationship with the Russian leader, he would seem more powerful. However, the Russia-expert said Orbán stood beside Putin after the Bucha massacres. Sz. Bíró said he could not agree with Orbán, who believed the US president went too far by condemning Putin for what happened in the Ukrainian city during the Russian occupation.
He believes Orbán lost his freedom after Bucha. For whatever reason, the Hungarian prime minister cannot act following the Hungarian national interests in the issue, he added. He said the Hungarian national interest was never to get cheap Russian oil and gas. That is because other countries, being hostile towards Russia after the invasion could also deal with their energy needs without Russian help. Therefore, Hungary does not need to maintain a special relationship with Russia, Sz. Bíró believes.
He said Orbán did so because there is some other reason why he lost his autonomy in connection with Russia and its president. However, he could not tell the reason.
“The Russian leadership blackmails him, and he is not a free person regarding Russia”, szmo.hu wrote. Sz. Bíró cleared that Orbán accepted all of the EU sanction packages, so criticising the so-called “Brussels bureaucrats” in that issue is a delusion of the society.
Regarding the national consultation launched by Fidesz concerning the sanctions, he said the government would ask questions to which the people do not know the answer since nobody knows what effects some of the sanctions have on Russia, for example, in the long run.
He also drew public attention to a weakness in the government’s communication. The Orbán administration never says that Putin should stop the invasion despite regularly talking about how important ending the war would be from an economic point of view.
Sz. Bíró believes Hungary should support Ukraine in multiple ways until Kyiv wins the war. “There is no room for compromises”, he added. He highlighted there was no guarantee that if Russia won, they would stop trying to get more territories.
