The foreign ministry quoted Péter Szijjártó as saying after talks in London with David Cameron, his British counterpart, that the proposal aimed at giving NATO an increased role in training Ukrainian soldiers and coordinating weapons shipments to Ukraine, as well as allocating 100 billion euros to support that country, had been put before member states of the organisation.

During a discussion of the proposal “it became clear that they do not really want to let us stay out of those common activities, but we will clearly stay out,” he said.

“Hungarian soldiers will not participate in such actions; we will not allow such actions to take place on the territory of Hungary and we want to stay out of the financing of that, too. We want Hungarian taxpayers’ money not to be used for such a purpose, but it will be a long fight,” he said.

“They want to push us into the war and want us Hungarians to participate in this crazy action,” the minister warned.

“The Hungarian government will continue to represent a pro-peace position and we will use all our strength to stay out of this crazy action despite all the pressure exerted (on us) within NATO.” By promoting the proposal NATO “has crossed its own red lines and is taking huge steps towards the war, while direct confrontation would carry the risk of the outbreak of a third world war,” he said.

Szijjártó said the “pro-war” proposal was based on the notion that “the war in Ukraine is our war” which ran contrary to the Hungarian government’s position. “And those who think that it is our war, argue in favour of continuing the war until Ukraine’s victory; NATO’s proposal is also based on that goal and the British position also suggests the same,” the minister said.

“Both the Brits and NATO tie the end of the war to a military outcome, which is absolutely unrealistic to achieve; its probability is low, practically almost impossible,” he said. There is no solution to the conflict on the battlefield because neither party can defeat the other, and a diplomatic solution is the only conceivable way,” Szijjártó said.

Hungary and the UK are allies and “absolutely see eye to eye on certain issues, while they do not agree at all in other questions,” Szijjártó said. Examples of the former case are their acting up against discrimination of nuclear energy and the need for improving Europe’s competitiveness, he added.

“We also agreed that ties between the European Union and the United Kingdom could also be mutually beneficial despite Britain’s exit from the EU, but it would be good if Brussels at last stopped punishing the UK and we could start treating EU-UK ties with common sense,” Szijjártó said.

“We are also in agreement that illegal migration must be stemmed because it is dangerous, for the migrants themselves, for transit countries, and for the destination countries, too,” Szijjártó said.

“However, on what we disagree is the issue of the war in Ukraine; while Hungary urges a ceasefire and peace talks, the Brits keep encouraging everyone to send more and more weapons to Ukraine,” he said.

“We can talk to each other on the basis of mutual respect, but over an important, currently the most import issue, namely how the war could be ended in Ukraine, we have conflicting positions,” he said.

Szijjártó in London: Everything Must Be Done for Hungarian Nation's Survival

Everything possible must be done to ensure the survival of the Hungarian nation, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, said in London, underlining the need to preserve the Hungarian communities in Hungary, the Carpathian Basin and the diaspora.

Addressing the inauguration of a new building of the Hungarian Children and Parents Group, Szijjártó said Hungarians had a duty to do everything in their power to help preserve Hungarian identity wherever they may live in the world.

“The reason this is a complex task, even in terms of geography, is that our job isn’t just to preserve the Hungarian nation in the motherland and the Carpathian Basin, but we also have to focus at least as much on preserving the Hungarian diaspora communities,” Szijjártó said.

“It calls for a strong motherland that is successful in taking on this mission, and, of course, a self-conscious and proud Hungarian nation that embraces and represents its own national values even in the face of headwinds.”

Policy for Hungarians beyond the border lies at the heart of Hungarian foreign policy and is based on the idea that “Hungarians are responsible for each other no matter where they live”, Szijjártó said.

“And the farther away one lives form the motherland, the more important communities become,” he said. “As long as our communities exist and stick together, it is safe to plan for the future.”

The minister said this required institutions like the House of Hungarians in central London whose building the government purchased in 2022 and which will be home to the Hungarian Children and Parents Group. Szijjártó thanked the school’s weekend volunteer teachers for their contributions to helping children preserve their Hungarian identity and the parents for enrolling some 60 children in the school.

Szijjártó: Hungary ‘Under Intense Pressure’

Hungary wants its soldiers to be exempt from participating in such a mission and does not want “anything relating to these types of operations happening on Hungary’s territory”, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister said at a meeting of ruling Fidesz’s parliamentary group.

Neither does Hungary want any of its taxpayers’ money to be used for the mission, he added. Hungary, he said, was under “intense pressure” to take part in the mission, pointing out that the other two NATO countries that had been on the fence had been persuaded to join the common position, and Hungary was now on its own. “

Everyone has been sucked in, and we’re on our own. And we’ll be completely alone in the battles in the coming weeks,” he said.

Szijjártó said work was already under way in Brussels on putting together the “hinterland” of the operation. “And we’re being pushed in,” he insisted. “We’ve more or less succeeded in getting them to accept, politically, that we don’t want to participate in this, but as I see it, they want to at least try to push us into the financial side of the story”.

“Now they’re trying to put pressure on us by saying, ‘fine, no Hungarian soldiers or even [the use of] Hungarian territory, but there has to be money’,” Szijjártó said. “And there we have the battle of the weeks ahead: no to all three.”

Meanwhile, Szijjártó said NATO did not want to set a precedent for a member state staying out of a military operation. He lamented that Western political leaders were showing no signs of backing out of weapons deliveries even though it had become clear that the conflict could not be settled on the battlefield.

“Everyone in Europe has been ordered to give everything they have … no matter how it may harm their own security,” the minister said. The clear position “in NATO circles today”, he said, was that allies needed to help Ukraine even at the risk of hurting their own security.

He cited the example of Slovakia, which had not been compensated on time for giving all of its military planes to Ukraine, and its airspace was now being policed by Hungary and Czechia.

“If we Hungarians and the Czechs didn’t guarantee the protection of Slovakia’s airspace, then their only air defence capability would be to angrily shake their fists up at the sky,” Szijjártó said.

He said that because weapons deliveries were “only enough to uphold the status quo”, the only way out was to involve NATO by sending troops and “causing a world war”. Szijjártó said another scenario would involve the use of nuclear weapons, “of which even one is enough to settle the fate of the world, and there are thousands of them on both sides”.

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