On Thursday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto warned against allowing Ukraine to use Western weapons to launch long-range strikes inside Russia.
“If long-range attacks hit the territory of Russia, then the risk of escalation will only increase,” Szijjarto wrote on Facebook ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. “We don’t want this.”
The meeting of EU foreign ministers was supposed to be held in Budapest, but the EU’s top foreign policy official, Josep Borrell, moved it to Brussels as a punishment for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s recent push for peace in Ukraine, which involved trips to Ukraine, Russia, and China.
During the meeting, Borrell pushed for giving Ukraine the ability to launch long-range strikes in Russia. “The weaponry that we are providing to Ukraine has to have full use, and the restrictions have to be lifted in order for the Ukrainians to be able to target the places [from] where Russia is bombing them. Otherwise, the weaponry is useless,” he said, according to POLITICO.
The meeting was also attended by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who has been pushing hard for the US and NATO to lift all restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western weapons.
POLITICO reported that Hungary also opposed a proposal from Borrell to sanction Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir for their rhetoric, which Borrell has called “an incitement to war crimes.”
After the meeting, Szijjarto described Borrell’s proposals as “reckless” and said Hungary wanted peace. “We do not want more weapons in Ukraine, we do not want more deaths, we do not want an escalation of the war, we do not want an expansion of the crisis in the Middle East. Today, we continue to stand for common sense and peace,” he said.
Source: Antiwar.
