Tamás Harangozó, a lawmaker of the opposition Socialists, asked Viktor Orbán to comment on Putin’s recent visit to a Soviet memorial honouring soldiers who took part in the crushing of Hungary’s anti-Soviet revolution in 1956, which he said had riled the Hungarian public, including people close to ruling party Fidesz.

Orbán said Soviet soldiers had fallen during the occupation of Hungary and the crushing of the 1956 uprising, and there are memorials for both categories.

“Hungary’s attitude to these has always been ambivalent and it always will be,” he said, noting that the memorials of soldiers who died in the second world war and in 1956 are very close to each other and it is difficult to tell them apart. Even if it causes political tension, Hungary will accept Russian leaders paying tributes at these memorials, he said.

Hungarian soldiers who fell in the Don Bend in 1943 were similarly regarded as aggressors by Russians, but Hungarians had never been stopped from commemorating them at those memorials, the prime minister added.

Source www.hungarymatters.hu

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