Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday questioned who began the Russia-Ukraine war and criticized Western leaders for supporting Kyiv.
Orbán said EU leaders are justifying their support by framing Ukraine as a small country that has been attacked.
“Of course, it’s not that small,” Orbán said, referring to Ukraine. “And it’s not even clear who attacked whom. In any case, it is a country that has been subjected to violence.”
When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he said two of Moscow’s key goals were to “liberate Donbas from the Kyiv regime” and to “demilitarize and denazify” the country.
In his annual press conference on Friday, Putin defended what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine. “We don’t consider ourselves responsible for people’s deaths because it wasn’t us who started the war,” Putin said in response to a question, blaming the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a “coup d’etat.”
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha responded to Orbán’s comments by posting on social media: “Just as ‘not clear’ as it was for Hungaryʼs leadership in 1939.”
Orbán was speaking to reporters after the European Council summit, where EU leaders agreed to jointly borrow €90 billion to send financial aid to Ukraine.
Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia chose not to participate in the program to fund Kyiv, cementing their Ukraine-skeptic alliance and delivering another blow to the EU’s unity after leaders failed to reach an agreement on using more than €200 billion in frozen Russian state assets to help Ukraine.
Orbán also revealed before Thursday’s EU summit that Putin had warned the Hungarian leader that Moscow would take countermeasures if the EU tapped Russian assets to help Ukraine.
According to Orbán, Putin told him there will be “a strong response using all the instruments of international law, and they will take into account the position of each individual member state of the union.”
“So we Hungarians have protected ourselves,” Orbán said.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again:
Isten veletek! Or shall I say do svidaniya?
🇪🇺🥾💥🇭🇺
If you insist on shitting where you eat and can’t see how great you’ve got it as part of a European commonwealth of nations, good riddance to you. And good luck with your Russian “friends”.
Unsure who voted for Orban
Unsure who let Orban in the EU
Unsure who voted for Orban
Valid.
Unsure who let Orban in the EU
That would be Hungary - they joined before Órban.
Unsure who let Orban in the EU
(Informal figurative speech) I meant: “Who let Orban join European politics as equal on the EU platform”
That would be the EU and its round robin rules.
Should they be changed to not allow things like that in the future? Done properly, yes.
They already have rules in place to isolate him, they just choose not to, because they’re afraid.
Let’s just trade Hungary for Ukraine already. Putin can have it instead and be over with it
On the one hand, Hungary has remained somewhat different from its neighbours because it’s surrounded by mountains and hard to get in or out of by land so it would seem a safe bet for a swap, but on the other, it’s the 21st century and mountains aren’t so much of an obstacle any more. Would we really want to give Putin an airstrip in the middle of Europe?
It would be foolish to assume Putin’s expansionist plans are limited to Ukraine. It’s just that Ukraine is proving a bit more difficult than he expected and he’s had to concentrate his efforts there.
We wouldn’t be giving them an airstrip in the middle of Europe, because all the countries around it (except Ukraine) are in NATO, and there is no path to the sea that is over a non-NATO country. And the ruskies demonstrably do not have the capability to fly across the entirety of Ukrainian airspace unmolested.
I did think about this, but I imagined that the Russians would find some way to fly mostly over populated areas on purpose so that shooting them down would risk a fireball falling on innocent civilians.
Escort flights might be a better choice, but I can see that turning into a multi-jet dogfight over innocent civilians instead, with a risk of multiple fireballs.
That’s not how IADS works.
Also, the Ukrainians have more than enough air defense capacity to massively maul any aerial force that attempts a north-south transit of the country. Russia has been keeping their sorties almost entirely over airspace they control, as a result. The strikes you have been seeing them do (against Ukrainian military and civilian targets) are almost exclusively executed with standoff weapons like cruise missiles (of which “kamikaze drones” are essential subtype), glide bombs, and SRBMs. Russian stealth doesn’t really work, and they’re super nervous about losing their supposed wunderwaffe (e.g. the dozen or so Su-57s they’ve made over a couple decades)
Don’t; no one deserves to be annexed by Russia. Or am might be very happy making Hungarians very unhappy.
For a stupid fuck, you’re quite a mental acrobat Victor!
Orbán also revealed before Thursday’s EU summit that Putin had warned the Hungarian leader that Moscow would take countermeasures if the EU tapped Russian assets to help Ukraine. […] “So we Hungarians have protected ourselves,” Orbán said.
Submitting to extortion is a dubious policy; advertising your susceptibility to extortion is practically an invitation.
I don’t get what Hungarians see in this dude. Bloated, weak and stupid isn’t usually what people look for in a leader.
He’s apparently been in power for a long time, at least since 2010 according to wikipedia (uninterrupted?). By now he simply knows how to play the system, and tweaked it in his favor. There’s not much democracy involved here.
People are right now again protesting his regime; even more than usually.
edit: hmm, I might have misread above comment, maybe jubilationtcornpone got it right.
hes been in power for like decade+, and he has state controlled propaganda on his shoulders.
State controlled propaganda.
Sure it’s bad, but have you considered if it was even worse?
— the state propaganda
I’m also unsure what Americans see in Trump.
But it has to do with what those people see hear and read, and that is controlled pretty trickily
Don’t call these sort of people stupid. They wouldn’t be were they are if they were.
Some of the dumbest people I know are very successful. It’s apparently very profitable to not think things through, boast about your own excellence, and ignore how your actions affect others.
There is a slight difference between being stupid and having no respect for others. Orbán and friends very well know what they are doing. They just don’t care about the consequences for others.
There is a slight difference between being stupid and having no respect for others.
They are simply different things. The latter is required to become wealthy (and usually also to become powerful), the former isn’t.
I assess them on a case-by-case basis: they are all heartless assholes but I’d say Trump is actively and harmfully stupid, while others are not. And it is often surprising how obviously dumb very rich people can be. No idea about Órban though.
There are multiple examples of stupid people getting into power through belligerence, although there tends to be a smart person in the background pulling the strings.
A lot of people mistake confidence with capability. So if you can say the stupidest shit like you mean it and never change your mind, there is a significant part of the population that will follow you, regardless of how stupid you are.
They guy talks like the abused wife looking away and making up excuses while the husband is beating the children.
Common, Russia didn’t even try to cover it up with a false flag and a speech about shooting back since 5:45. It shouldn’t be so hard to figure out who started it.
Not straight up blaming Ukraine or “The West” for starting the war almost sounds like an improvement to me, coming from him.
Almost like he’s starting to realise that Russia might lose.
I’m surprised he didn’t blame Soros for starting the war.
Or the Nazi Jews of Ukraine.
