BUDAPEST, December 1. /TASS/. Budapest maintains contact with Moscow based not only on the need to secure oil and gas supplies but also on Russia’s key role in the international security system, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said.
"We cannot afford to stop using diplomatic channels and keeping relations with the country from which we receive much of our energy supplies and which will eventually become a crucial player not only in the European but also in the global security system, whether we like it or not," the top diplomat pointed out in the Hour of Truth program on YouTube, emphasizing that Russia is the largest country in the world and holds nuclear weapons.
Szijjarto also confirmed that Hungary did not need permission from the EU, Germany or any other country to develop relations with Russia. "Thank God, gone are the days when Budapest needed to ask Berlin for permission before doing something," he stressed, commenting on German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s remark that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban had visited Moscow on November 28 without consent from the EU leadership.
Earlier, Szijjarto said that neither Germany nor EU leaders could tell the Hungarian government who to engage with.