Washington condemns Hungary for using NATO against Kyiv

Ambassador Kurt Volker, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine negotiations, said to Hungarian daily Népszava that Hungary was making a mistake by using NATO as a tool to try to resolve its dispute with Ukraine. Furthermore, Mr Volker hopes that the new Ukrainian president will be able to break the corruption schemes of the country.

According to nepszava.hu, Hungary blocks all high-level meetings between NATO and Ukraine. For example, in 2018, the NATO-Ukraine summit was postponed because of the veto of Budapest. This is because two laws were accepted by the Ukrainian parliament severely restricting the right of the minorities living in Ukraine to receive an education in their mother tongue and technically banning the free use of their language.

The ambassador gave an online press conference during which Népszava inquired about any progress from NATO to get Hungary to lift its veto for conducting meetings by the NATO-Ukraine Commission. He answered that “unfortunately, there has not been any progress on that to date. I do hope that with the election of President Zelensky – and let me remind that he is a native Russian-language speaker who also speaks Ukrainian – that

there needs to be an agreement between Hungary and Ukraine

on how to deal with the question of national minorities, the rights of those minorities to speak and to have education in their own language, and at the same time to ensure that the citizens of Ukraine, all of them, also learn and use Ukrainian as part of their communications in their official language in the country. That needs to be resolved,” he added.

“I think that Hungary is making a mistake by using NATO as a tool to try to put pressure on this issue. Ukraine faces important external challenges – the attack, the invasion, the occupation by Russia. That is something that should be of concern to every NATO ally, including Hungary, and blocking high-level meetings between NATO and Ukraine, I believe, is a mistake, even if

I support the notion of dialogue and resolution of the issues concerning the Hungarian minority’s use of their language,”

he declared.

As we reported before, the new Ukrainian language law was accepted on 25 April, and it makes the use of Ukrainian as an official language compulsory and fines the use of other languages at the same time. Hungarian organisations in the Carpathian Basin protested against the legislation, saying that it

eliminated all of the minorities’ rights to use their own language.

The parliament of Kyiv accepted the law with a huge majority, and it was signed by former president Petro Poroshenko.

Volker added that he has trust in the new Ukrainian president’s commitment towards chasing corruption in the country. Furthermore, he highlighted that Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in a democratic election. According to him, in Ukraine, the strengthening of democratic institutions, providing security and eliminating corruption are the most imperative. Regarding the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, he talked about a humanitarian catastrophe and highlighted that victims of the Russian occupation should be helped not only by the Ukrainian government but also by international organisations.

Source: nepszava.hu, state.gov