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.