Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the Hungarian government "expects Brussels, European countries and their leaders not to thwart the success of the Russian-Ukrainian peace talks.
Speaking in Antalya, Turkiye, on Thursday, after an informal meeting of his NATO counterparts, Minister Szijjártó said that he hoped peace talks set for later in the day in Istanbul would go ahead.
"We have urged peace talks for three years," he said. "In March 2022, here in Istanbul, Turkiye, Ukrainians and Russians almost managed to strike an agreement ... after less than two months of fighting. Concluding the war, however, was obstructed at that time ... by politicians who have attacked us day after day during the past three years for promoting peace and a ceasefire," Minister Szijjártó said.
"If those Western European politicians had not hindered a Russia-Ukraine agreement, hundreds of thousands -- even millions -- of people would not have died and the damage to Ukraine would have been hundreds of billions of euros less; many hundred billions of euros could have been spent on Europe's economic development and Europe's defence capabilities..." the minister added.
The politicians who thwarted those talks "bear a grave responsibility," he added.
"We hope that both Russia and Ukraine will have the necessary steadiness and openness to facilitate direct talks here in Turkiye or anywhere else in the world," Minister Szijjártó said.
Minister Szijjártó said he had expressed Hungary's gratitude to US President Donald Trump, via his US counterpart, Marco Rubio, for efforts made towards peace in the past months.
"It is to be owed to Donald Trump that direct talks between Russia and the US have restarted," Minister Szijjártó said, adding that those talks "have already made the world safer than it was before".
"Thanks to Donald Trump, there is at least the hope of direct Russian-Ukrainian talks, and we agree with him that this war in Ukraine would not have broken out had he been president when it broke out," Minister Szijjártó said.