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More anti-Russian sanctions to make situation in EU even worse – Hungarian top diplomat

According to the head of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, Peter Szijjarto, "the imposed sanctions did not bring the war in Ukraine closer to an end"

BUDAPEST, December 14. /TASS/. Previous packages of anti-Russian sanctions failed to bring an end to the conflict in Ukraine and only made the economic situation in Europe worse, and the ninth package of sanctions, if adopted, will be no exception, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.

"The sanctions turned out to be a dead end, and are doing serious harm to everyone, yet Europe has not yet abandoned this policy, regretfully," the minister said in a video address, posted on his Facebook (banned in Russia, owned by the Meta corporation, recognized as extremist in Russia) page on Tuesday.

In his words, the ninth package of sanctions that is now in the works "will apparently make the situation in Europe even worse."

"The past eight packages of sanctions demonstrated that each of them inflicted more harm to us, Europeans, than to those they were intended to target," the minister said.

"The sanctions that had been imposed failed to bring an end to the conflict [in Ukraine], they only created problems and hardships for European Union countries. Our goal is to defend Hungary’s national interests. We must not allow sanctions to do even more harm to the Hungarian economy," he added.

Szijjarto called upon all Hungarians to express their attitude to anti-Russian sanctions during the national-level consultations in the country that will continue until December 15.

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