The European Peace Facility was posed to transfer €500 million to Ukraine for artillery round purchases, but the aid was blocked by the Hungarian government. The official explanation for the move is that Budapest would like to see the off-budget EU fund focus on more than just Ukraine, but some believe the blacklisting of OTP Bank may be behind it.
While talking to reporters on his flight from Budapest to Vatican City, Pope Francis revealed that the Vatican is engaged in a ‘peace mission’, which he has discussed with Prime Minister Orbán and Bishop Hilarion in Budapest. The Kyiv government has made it clear that it does not approve of such an effort.
Four Central European countries, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria, have announced bans on foodstuff imports coming from Ukraine. Meanwhile, Romania has joined them in demanding action from the EU to address these concerns. The five countries are estimated to have lost 417 million EUR combined due to cheap Ukrainian food imports.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made a surprise visit to Kyiv, Ukraine to meet with President Zelenskyy, where he expressed his strong support for Ukraine’s accession to the military alliance. Viktor Orbán, who has been a vocal proponent of peace negotiations and is fully aware that such remarks are seen as a provocative move by Russia, took to Twitter to voice his strong dissent.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán emphasised that Budapest and Warsaw will join forces to protect the agricultural workers of Central Europe from the negative effects of ‘grain dumps’ coming from Ukraine.
The Prime Minister said that the rebuilding of Russian-European economic relations after the war would be desirable, but it is unlikely to happen any time soon.
Romania has joined Budapest in criticising some of Kyiv’s policies. Bucharest has raised ecological concerns over Ukraine’s plan to continue to dredge the Danube Delta to increase its volume of trade through the Bystroye Canal.
Worries grow about Moldova’s stability as the second wave of pro-Russian protests erupted in Chișinău and Wizz Air temporarily suspended its flights due to repeated violations of Moldova’s airspace by Russian missiles.
Trans-Dniester in Moldova is considered to be Russia’s next target for invasion by the intelligence communities of multiple countries. Meanwhile, there has been social unrest is the capital city of Chisinau, also suspected to be connected to the Kremlin.
‘We did not set the speech up some kind of head-to-head. This is not a rhetorical contest with anyone else,’ underlined US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, stating that Biden’s speech was not planned as a direct rebuttal to Putin.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
