High ranking Fidesz officials and pundits appeared unable to call Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “war” as the opposition demanded that the country choose between Europe and “the East” at Tuesday’s national celebrations.
Thousands of Hungarians took to the streets in Budapest on Tuesday (15 March) to mark the start of the 1848 uprising against the Habsburg rule, which ended with a brutal Russian Tsarist putdown.
This year, Moscow’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine dominated the speeches ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections on 3 April.
Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén said Hungary did not regret its continuous blockade of Ukraine-NATO Commission talks over ethnic minority rights.
“I note that if Ukraine had been more generous in guaranteeing minority rights, perhaps history would have been a little different as well,” Semjén told EURACTIV’s media partner Telex.
Pro-government pundit András Bencsik said Hungary escaped the third world war and “this is not a regular war, so this is a Slav-on-Slav crisis between Russians and Ukrainians”.
In his speech, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said what is at stake for the elections is “a pro-peace right or pro-war left”. According to him, “the left would step into the war, sending Hungarian soldiers and weapons to war”.
Meanwhile, the united opposition’s prime ministerial candidate Péter Márki Zay said “we have a single historic choice: to choose Europe over the East, Freedom over tyranny.”
The conservative European People’s Party president, former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who participated in the opposition’s rally, said “no honest person should have any doubt about which side they are on in this fight. That is why the Hungarian election is important not only for you, but for the whole of Europe and for the Ukrainian people.”
“Viktor Orbán and his team have worked hard to create the most pro-Putin image in the whole of Europe”, the former EU Council president added.
Ukraine has hit back for what it sees as a pro-Kremlin stance in Budapest after Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Monday that missile strikes near Lviv underscore the importance of the Hungarian government’s previous decision not to allow the transport of lethal aid through Hungary to Ukraine.
He added that Hungary would keep resisting all pressure regarding allowing the transit of weapons through the country.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in an interview, posted on the Ukrainian embassy’s Facebook page. “Reading my colleague [foreign affairs minister] Péter Szijjártó’s statements, I am beginning to doubt whether he remembers the 1848-1849 revolution and war of independence, when the Russian army crushed the Hungarian struggle, or 1956, when Soviet tanks trampled their freedom on the streets of Budapest and Hungarians asked for help from the West, which they did not get.”
Though Hungary has backed Western sanctions and promised to let NATO troops into the Western part of the country, it refused to let weapons shipments to Ukraine through its territory and blamed Brussels for the fallout over sanctions.
“Caring for the safety of Hungarian citizens does not mean turning a blind eye to the murder of Ukrainian citizens”, Kuleba said.
“In fact, today the Ukrainians are defending not only their own state, but the entire eastern flank of NATO, including Hungary. By helping us, especially with arms, our partners are helping themselves first and foremost,” he added.
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