Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said Hungary is ready to continue supporting Ukraine on a bilateral basis.
The minister said Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, had “kindly warned us today that we should not gamble in connection with the 18 billion euros worth of [EU] financial assistance earmarked for Ukraine”. In a post on Facebook, Minister Szijjártó said his German counterpart “has seriously misunderstood the situation,” insisting that Hungary’s refusal to provide financial assistance in the form of long-term loans “is not a question of tactics, but a matter of principle”. “A common future for Europe is not in accumulating piles of debts,” he said. Minister Szijjártó said, “we are ready to continue to support Ukraine, and exactly in the form we have done until now: on a bilateral basis”.