BUDAPEST, November 13. /TASS/. Hungary will be blocking a new 500 million euros tranche from the European Peace Fund to Ukraine until Kiev guarantees that it will not add OTP Bank to the Ukrainian list of "international war sponsors" again, Minister of Foreign Affairs and External Economic Relations of Hungary, Peter Szijjarto said on Monday.
"Today we have been under enormous pressure to pay 500 million euros from the so-called European Peace Fund for arms supplies to Ukraine. Of course, we will not do this. We will continue to defend our position until we receive from the National Agency on Corruption Prevention in Ukraine, guarantees that something like this will never happen [to OTP Bank] again," Szijjarto said at a meeting with Hungarian reporters.
The meeting was broadcast on the politician’s Facebook page (banned in Russia, owned by the Meta corporation, recognized as extremist in Russia).
In early October, following the demand of Hungary, OTP Bank was removed from the Ukrainian list of "international war sponsors," but Budapest wants guarantees from Kiev that such incidents will not repeat. Meanwhile, several managers of OTP Bank remain on the Ukrainian list facing the threat to come under sanctions. The Hungarian Foreign Ministry invited the Ukrainian delegation to negotiations in Budapest to discuss this issue.
OTP, Hungary’s largest bank with over 3 mln customers, was included in the list this spring. Earlier, Szijjarto cautioned that until its removal from the list, Hungary would not even discuss the blocked EU military aid to Ukraine. Due to Budapest’s position on the matter, the EU was unable to proceed with providing the next installment of military aid worth 500 mln euros to the Kiev regime at a meeting of EU defense ministers in Toledo, Spain, in late August.