Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó of Hungary held an impromptu press conference after meeting with his fellow EU Foreign Ministers at the Foreign Affairs Council on Thursday, 20 November in Brussels, Belgium. It is no exaggeration to say that he had left that meeting unimpressed.
‘Insanity’ is the most polite term he could use to describe the other ministers’ attitude towards Ukraine and the recently erupted major corruption scandal there, Minister Szijjártó told reporters at the start of his presser. He shared that some of his colleagues in the Council went as far as arguing that this corruption scandal is just another reason to let Ukraine join the European Union, as it is the best way to prevent such misuse of public funds in the country in the future.
The Hungarian minister, evidently, finds that notion absurd, and instead demands that Ukrainian officials account for every single Euro given to them in aid before receiving any further funding from the Union.
He also stated that the war is ‘unwinnable’ for Ukraine, and the possibility of a Ukrainian victory is just an ‘illusion’ held by the leadership in Brussels. Therefore, the best course of action is to support US President Donald Trump’s peace efforts in order to achieve a negotiated peace as soon as possible, he continued; yet Brussels is actively working to undermine that plan. Szijjártó also condemned some of the European FMs for praising Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure.
Minister Szijjártó also shared that his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha joined the meeting live via satellite. However, he only spoke ‘maybe two sentences’ about the corruption scandal rocking his government, and instead spent most of his time on the floor calling for sanctions on Russian energy companies and tariffs on Russian goods coming into Europe, which would greatly hurt the European economy, as FM Szijjártó pointed out.
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