BUDAPEST, July 29. /TASS/. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said he doesn’t believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump will cut off their business and political relations, even after Trump moved the deadline closer for a Ukraine settlement deal
He was referring to the recent announcement by the US president that he now expected Washington and Moscow to reach a deal on Ukraine within 10-12 days.
"If I understand correctly, there are now 9-11 days left. But I look at this positively and hope that there will be no rift between the American and Russian presidents, because I think the world has become a safer place since they started talking to each other," the minister said in a program on the YouTube channel of Balazs Nemeth, a well-known Hungarian TV host.
"We live in Central Europe. We have definitive historical experience that tells us that if the Russians and Americans are capable of civilized cooperation, the world will become safer. If they are incapable of this, then a problem arises. Hungarian history clearly proves this," Szijjarto went on to say.
According to the minister, when Western Europeans try to undermine Trump's peace efforts and US-Russia talks, their actions are "extremely irresponsible and criminal."
"The fact is that if Joe Biden's failed administration had not made so many military decisions between its downfall and the inauguration of the new US president, if [Vladimir] Zelensky and his team had not sought to undermine Donald Trump's efforts, and if Western Europeans had not obstructed his peace efforts, we could have found ourselves in a much more promising situation than we are now," he said.
Szijjarto blamed Western European leaders for failing to contain or isolate the conflict in Ukraine and in effect turned it into a European war.
On July 14, Trump said that the US would impose tariffs of about 100% on Russia and its trading partners if Moscow and Washington did not reach a deal on resolving the conflict in Ukraine within 50 days. However, he shortened the timeframe on July 28.