Brussels is behind Ukraine’s attempt to block oil from entering Hungary and Slovakia, Budapest’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, has claimed.
Speaking at a music festival over the weekend of August 3, Szijjártó claimed that the European Union must be behind Ukraine’s sanctioning Lukoil, the Russian energy firm largely responsible for supplying both Hungary and Slovakia with oil.
The transportation of Lukoil-owned hydrocarbons through the Druzhba pipeline that originates in Russia was blocked by Ukraine last month, prompting fears of energy shortages.
🇪🇺🇺🇦 FM Péter Szijjártó: I believe that the decision in Kyiv not to allow Lukoil's supplies to pass through to Hungary and Slovakia was coordinated from Brussels because quite simply the European Union cannot be so weak, cannot be that weak, as to tolerate a candidate country… pic.twitter.com/Gzd75bWQt7
— Zoltan Kovacs (@zoltanspox) August 5, 2024
“I believe that the decision in Kyiv not to allow Lukoil’s supplies to pass through to Hungary and Slovakia was co-ordinated from Brussels,” Szijjártó told festival goers.
He surmised that Eurocrats must be behind the decision “because quite simply the European Union cannot be so weak as to tolerate a candidate country taking a decision that jeopardises the security of energy supply of two Member States without prior consultation”.
Prompting the move, he added, was a desire to punish the governments of both Slovakia and Hungary for their “pro-peace” position on the Ukraine war, with both Member States keen on establishing a peace deal between Russia and Kyiv as soon as possible.
“They want us to understand that we cannot do this with impunity,” he said.
Szijjártó also vowed a Hungarian retaliation over the measures, insisting that Budapest would block further deliveries of EU aid to Ukraine under the so-called “European Peace Facility” until oil deliveries resumed.
He also appeared hopeful that a peace deal would soon be reached, saying that should Donald Trump return as president in the US later this year, that would likely accelerate the process.
Such a re-election would also, he claimed, likely improve Hungarian-American relations, which he said have become strained under current US President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party administration.
“Under Trump the relations were great, under the Democrats they are very bad,” he said, citing the fact that the US has been backing opposition-friendly media outlets in Budapest as one reason behind relations souring.
“We are striving for a good relationship with the US, which has a personal dimension, and that is called Donald Trump,” he added.
“We want peace, like Donald Trump.”
The Hungarian Government has dismissed criticism from the European People’s Party of Budapest’s new visa policy for Russian and Belarusian citizens as “childish lies”. https://t.co/y1rnf5xqsk
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) August 1, 2024
