‘If Hungary does not receive more oil from Russia, we will simply not survive; we will not be able to supply the country,’ Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó emphasized in an interview with the Russian TV channel RBK. The minister stressed that currently, there is no alternative route capable of supplying Hungary with sufficient oil other than the pipeline that runs through Ukraine.
The threat of escalation in the Middle East is growing following Saturday’s deadly strike by Hezbollah on an Israeli-controlled settlement in the Golan Heights. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has even gone so far as to threaten Israel with an invasion.
New sanctions by the Ukrainian government have forced oil transports from the Russian oil procedure Lukoil to be stopped to Hungary and Slovakia. However, Hungary is still receiving gas shipments from Russia uninterrupted through the TurkStream pipeline.
The European Union will support arms shipments to Ukraine using a portion of the frozen Russian assets. The foreign ministers of the Member States decided on this issue on Monday, excluding Hungary from the decision-making process. Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó described the decision as a ‘shameless disregard of European rules’.
Monday’s Foreign Affairs Council meeting was incredibly tense, with Péter Szijjártó coming under enormous pressure regarding the fourteenth sanctions package and the additional military and financial support to be provided to Ukraine. EU foreign ministers continue to criticize the Hungarian government for its pro-peace stance, which it has consistently maintained since the outbreak of the war.
The Hungarian Foreign Minister was in London on Wednesday for talks with his UK counterpart, David Cameron, discussing the war in Ukraine, migration, and energy issues. Péter Szijjártó also participated in a panel discussion at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, arguing, among other things, for the need to replace the Brussels leadership.
The Ukrainian government is working on blacklisting 14 products by the Hungarian pharmaceutical company Richter. Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó believes that this has no professional basis, only political, and spoke up against the planned bannings at the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg.
The Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade summoned Ambassador David Pressman on Tuesday in response to US President Joe Biden’s statement, in which he had implicitly referred to Viktor Orbán as a dictator.
The Hungarian foreign minister appeared on a public radio programme on Sunday, and rebutted the statement by President Macron of France, per which he did not rule out deploying NATO troops in defence of Ukraine, pointing out that it is ‘diametrically opposed to joint decisions taken till now’.
In an interview with Italian public television, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó stated that he is appalled by how the Italian media has presented the Salis case, portraying the Antifa activist who beat innocent people last year as a martyr.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
