BUDAPEST, July 19. /TASS/. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has accused Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky of trying to drag NATO into an armed conflict with Russia and condemned his criticism of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s peacekeeping efforts.
According to the Hungarian mass media, Zelensky, who was invited to a summit of the European Political Community in the United Kingdom on July 18, slammed Orban’s recent visit to Moscow as a betrayal of Europe.
The top Hungarian diplomat warned however that neither Kiev’s accusations nor Brussels’ criticism would have any impact on his country’s actions. "We will continue our peacekeeping mission because if we fail to achieve success, if we fail to reach peace soon, we may be looking at a very bad situation where more atrocious things are done on the frontline, the risk of the conflict escalation goes up, the situation runs amok and we see all of Europe on fire. Because I see that there are a lot of people, including the [Ukrainian] president, who are seeking to drag NATO into this war," he said after talks with his visiting Lebanese counterpart, Abdallah Bou Habib.
He went on to defend Orban and his peace mission, recalling that the conflict continues killing people and forcing them to flee their homes, while the authorities are banning them from leaving the country in violation of human rights under the passive eye of international human rights organizations. "We say that peace in Ukraine is needed and then the Ukrainian president addresses the Hungarian prime minister with such disrespect that I can barely hold my tongue," he said, commenting on Zelensky’s statements.
During his ten-day peacekeeping mission earlier in July, the Hungarian prime minister visited Kiev on July 2 and held talks with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Three days later, he went to Moscow to speak with the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. After that, he paid a visit to Beijing, where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Washington D.C., where he held talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO summit. Moreover, after the summit, he visited former US President Donald Trump at his Florida residence. Ways of settling the Ukrainian conflict were among the topics the two discussed. After this meeting, Orban said that he was sure that Trump, should he win the US presidential election in November, would resolve this problem.