BUDAPEST, October 4. /TASS/. Hungary has demanded guarantees from the Ukrainian authorities that from now on they will not include Hungarian companies on their list of "international sponsors of war" for groundless reasons as they did with OTP Bank, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said.

"The decision by Ukraine's National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) to remove OTP Bank from the list of ‘international sponsors of war’ is the right move. All four reasons why this bank, which has a share of only 0.17% in the Russian financial market, was included on this list are groundless. However, there is a serious question whether we will not face such a ridiculous decision again. Therefore, today we have asked the Ukrainian NACP to discuss the issue as soon as possible, and we hope to be able to reach an agreement on its solution," Peter Szijjarto said, speaking at a press conference after a meeting with Moldovan Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economic Development and Digitalization Dmitry Alaiba.

On September 29, the Ukrainian NACP announced that it had suspended the inclusion of the Hungarian bank OTP and five Greek shipping companies on the list of "international sponsors of war," to which they had been previously added for their cooperation with Russia. Meanwhile, the NACP expressed hope that this decision would lead to Hungary unblocking the EU tranche of €500 million for military aid to Ukraine, as well as keep Greece from blocking the next package of EU sanctions against Russia. The Hungarian government said that it considered the decision half-hearted and insufficient, after which the NACP finally removed OTP from its blacklist.

Hungary’s largest bank, which has more than three million customers, was added to the Ukrainian list this spring. Afterward, Szijjarto warned that until it was removed from the list, Hungary would not even discuss the allocation of EU military aid to Ukraine. As a result, the EU failed to provide Kiev with the next tranche of military aid worth €500 million at its meeting in Toledo in late August.