Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has repeatedly made pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian statements. Recently, he once again confirmed his reputation as a retransmitter of Russian narratives. During a press conference in Brussels, commenting on the EU’s decision regarding financing for Ukraine, Orbán stated that in the war taking place on Ukrainian territory, it is “not entirely clear who attacked whom.”
This statement is an outright lie and manipulation.
Specifically, Viktor Orbán stated the following: “They (EU country leaders) calmly have breakfast at home, drink coffee and think that from a moral point of view it is right to help a small country that was attacked, of course, not such a small one, and it’s not entirely clear who attacked whom, but in any case we are now helping a country that has suffered violence, and it costs us nothing. But in the end they will pay… The use of frozen Russian assets is tantamount to declaring war on Moscow…”
It is worth recalling that on March 2, 2022, the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution “Aggression against Ukraine,” which condemned the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation and demanded that Russia immediately withdraw its troops from Ukrainian territory. The authors of the resolution were members of the UN Security Council — the United States and the Republic of Albania, and co-authors included nearly 100 states.
141 countries voted for the document, which became a record number of votes in support of a Ukrainian resolution since 2014. Only Russia, Belarus (which was directly involved in the invasion), Syria, Eritrea, and North Korea voted against it. The resolution most resolutely condemns Russia’s aggression against Ukraine as a violation of the UN Charter, including Russia’s decision of February 24, 2022, to begin the so-called “special military operation.” The document also emphasizes that the scale of Russian military actions on the sovereign territory of Ukraine is unprecedented for Europe in recent decades and requires urgent international action.
Thus, Viktor Orbán is either unfamiliar with basic UN documents, which indicates an extremely low level of awareness for the head of a European state, or is deliberately manipulating, ignoring key decisions of the international community.
Moreover, Orbán overlooks another important document: on December 17, 2024, the UN General Assembly officially recognized Russia’s war against Ukraine as a war of aggression for the first time. This wording was used in an updated resolution dedicated to the human rights situation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The document provides for enhanced international monitoring of crimes and human rights violations that Russian authorities commit against the local population.
Thus, for the overwhelming majority of the international community, the question of “who attacked whom” has long ceased to be debatable. However, as we can see, not for the Prime Minister of Hungary.
It should be separately emphasized that in his statement, Orbán essentially retransmitted key Russian propaganda narratives, including:
— the claim that Russia was allegedly “forced” to start the so-called “SMO” in response to an imaginary threat from Ukraine; — the thesis that financial and military assistance to Ukraine from Western partners is “dragging the West into war” against Russia, and therefore Russia is allegedly single-handedly opposing “the entire collective West.”
Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Andriy Sybiha responded to Viktor Orbán’s statement that it is “not entirely clear to him who attacked whom.” On social network X, he wrote: “Just as ‘unclear’ as it was for the Hungarian leadership in 1939, Mr. Orbán.”
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