The foreign minister said the position taken by NATO on the war in Ukraine remains aligned with Hungary’s national interests, namely that everything must be done to prevent the conflict from spreading beyond Ukraine’s borders.
Addressing a press conference during a break in an informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Berlin on Sunday, Péter Szijjártó said that as a neighboring country to Ukraine, what mattered most to Hungary was that the conflict did not spread beyond Ukraine’s borders. Everyone in NATO “knows that Hungary is on the side of peace” and as a neighbor to Ukraine is in a “special situation”, Minister Szijjártó said. He underlined that NATO is a defense alliance, “and our most important duty and interest is protecting Hungary and the Hungarian people”. The position that everything must be done to prevent direct conflict between NATO and Russia also enjoys broad support, he said. On the topic of sanctions, Minister Szijjártó said it was “pointless” to impose sanctions that “hurt us more than the country we would impose them on”. Concerning Finland’s and Sweden’s bids to join NATO, he said Hungary had always backed the alliance’s “open door policy”, adding, at the same time, that the position expressed by Turkey should also be taken into consideration.
Photo credit: Facebook/Szijjártó Péter