Hungary has always abstained from voting on arms supplies to Ukraine, but as long as the largest Hungarian bank, OTP, is included by Kiev in the list of international war sponsors, it will vote against, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said
BUDAPEST (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th July, 2023) Hungary has always abstained from voting on arms supplies to Ukraine, but as long as the largest Hungarian bank, OTP, is included by Kiev in the list of international war sponsors, it will vote against, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.
"We still demand from the Ukrainian authorities that they remove this characteristic from OTP, remove OTP from this list. And until this happens, we will not agree to payments to EU members for the supply of weapons to Ukraine," Szijjarto said at a press conference with Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, who is a co-chairman of the Russian-Hungarian intergovernmental commission.
He said Hungary believes the weapons supply prolongs the conflict.
"So we did not agree at all with the supply of weapons and do not supply arms. We have always constructively abstained when decisions were being made to allocate money from the European Peace Facility for arms supply to Ukraine. Because we believed that if others want, let them do it. But we will not even constructively abstain as long as the OTP bank is on this list," Szijjarto said.
He said Hungary "does not care what Moscow, Washington and Brussels think about it, as it is about the Hungarian national interests."
Earlier, the Ukrainian National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) reported that it had included the Hungarian banking group OTP Bank Group on the list of international "sponsors of war" due to allegedly preferential lending to the Russian military.
Since the beginning of the conflict, Hungary has consistently opposed both sanctions on Russian energy resources and weapons supplies to Ukraine. In March 2022, the Hungarian parliament issued a decree banning arms supply to Ukraine from the country's territory. Szijjarto said Budapest was seeking to secure the territory of Transcarpathia, where ethnic Hungarians live, since arms supply through its territory would become a legitimate military target. The country's leadership has repeatedly stressed that Hungary stands for peace talks.
Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in response to calls by the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics for protection from Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry said the operation, which targets Ukrainian military infrastructure, aims to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine, and to completely liberate Donbas. Western nations have imposed numerous sanctions on Russia and have been supplying weapons to Ukraine.
