Hungary must stay on the side of peace, PM says
The prime minister said the war in Ukraine will not end unless the Russian and US presidents sit down for talks and they reach an overall agreement which will cover the war as an important element, but not the only element.
PM Orbán said in the interview with Tamás Király on the YouTube channel Ultrahang that if everyone wanted peace, 'it is impossible that peace would not be achieved'. 'What happens in the current situation is that everyone says they want peace, yet some of them do not really want it,' he added.
PM Orbán said that Europeans and Ukrainians obviously wanted to continue war no matter what they said, and the US president truly wanted peace. 'As for the Russians, what's certain is that they want to reach the marked territorial borders and want to prevent, if necessary by war, that Ukraine should become a NATO member or a NATO weapons depository,' he added.
Beyond the issue of the war, the comprehensive Russia-US agreement would cover the development of energy prices, US access to Russian markets and Russian access to US markets, economic sanctions, technology, and the issue of arms control, he said.
PM Orbán said Hungary was a 'dangerous example' showing in Europe that it was possible to take a stand against war, to stand up for peace, and 'if you are strong enough you can stay out of the war'. Hungary was 'the antithesis of all that Europe is doing, talking about peace but in truth being interested in maintaining the war,' he added.
He said he was regularly putting in use all his links with both the Russian and the US presidents to promote peace.
While US President Donald Trump has failed to create peace since his inauguration in January, 'if Biden had stayed or Kamala Harris had come in his stead, we would be in the middle of a world war.' Trump 'is a man of peace and doubtlessly the only one with a chance to contribute to a Russia-Ukraine peace' deal, he said.
Asked why he stood firmly for keeping Hungary out of the war from the beginning, Orban said his 'firm conviction' was founded on national interests, among other reasons. 'Hungary cannot come out of a situation where 800,000 or a million people are armed in Ukraine, creating a larger and stronger army than Hungary's; only God knows what that would be used in the coming decade,' he said.
PM Orbán said 'no condition is in place' for Ukraine to win against Russia. Ukraine 'has fewer men and less money than Russia even is the West stuffs them with money, its weapons industry is decades behind Russia's, and, most importantly, Russia is a nuclear power, and no one … has ever defeated a nuclear superpower'. 'I have always thought that the plan that Ukraine should defeat Russia on the frontline, possibly destabilising it so it can be transformed, was a foolish one,' Orban said.
Meanwhile, PM Orbán said the focus of 'the historic period we are living in' was not the Russia-Ukraine war but 'the problem of Christian-Muslim coexistence'. 'What's the point in Christian, white Europeans killing each other by the hundreds of thousands on the Russia-Ukraine border while masses of people, who are strangers to our culture … and belong to the world of Islam are allowed to enter at the other end of the continent?'
PM Orbán said that this 'abnormal behaviour' was a sign that 'political leaders are misreading the historic time'.
'The power issues of the Russia-Ukraine war, and its conclusion, may be more important at the moment, but it isn't the historic time that will determine the lives of our children and grandchildren.'
He said there was no danger of Russia attacking NATO member states, adding that while Russia had some 140 million inhabitants, the EU had 400 million. Further, the money Russia could plough into a war with Europe 'is a fraction' of what the West could mobilise, even without US help, he said.
He said he had yet to see a 'sensible argument' of why Russia would start a war against Western Europe, that it could only lose.
At the same time, the Baltic states and Poland 'are worried that NATO won't protect them against a Russian attack; that explains why they want to beat the Russians now and bring the matter to a head,' PM Orbán said.
At the same time, the solution to the problem is not on the battlefield, he said. 'The response to their dilemma is not forcing a war but strengthening NATO,' he added.
PM Orbán said the NATO summit of 2008 had proven that Russians had the power to prevent Ukrainians or Georgians from becoming NATO members, and since that time once again Russia had to be considered a persisting, long-lasting and continually strengthening player in world politics.
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