BUDAPEST, Jul 6 Hungary has always abstained from supply votes weapons to Ukraine, but while the largest Hungarian bank OTP is included by Kiev in the list of «international sponsors of the war», it will vote against, said the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations of Hungary, Peter Szijjarto.
“We continue to demand from the Ukrainian authorities that they remove this characteristic from OTP, remove OTP from this list. And until this happens, we will not agree to payments to EU members for arms supplies to Ukraine,” Szijjártó said at a press conference with the head of the Russian Ministry of Health, Mikhail Murashko, who is the co-chairman of the Russian-Hungarian intergovernmental commission.
According to him, Hungary adheres to the position that the supply of weapons prolongs the conflict. “Therefore, we did not agree at all with the supply of weapons and do not supply weapons. We have always constructively refrained from making decisions on allocating money from the European Peace Fund for the supply of weapons to Ukraine. Because we believed that if others want, then let them do it. But we and We will not constructively abstain as long as the OTP bank is on this list,» Szijjarto said.
The head of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry stressed that Hungary «is not interested in what they think about this in Moscow, Washington and Brussels, since it is about the Hungarian national interests.»
Earlier, the Ukrainian National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) reported that it had included the Hungarian banking group OTP Bank Group in the list of international «sponsors of the war» due to allegedly preferential lending to the Russian military.
The extrabudgetary European Peace Facility (EPF) was created by the EU in March 2021 to increase the ability to prevent conflicts and strengthen international security. The fund was calculated within the framework of about 5.7 billion euros for the period 2021-2027. However, most of the funds from this fund have already been set aside for partial compensation to EU member states of the funds spent on providing military assistance to Ukraine. Earlier, the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, proposed to allocate an additional billion euros to finance the supply of ammunition to Ukraine using the funds of the fund.
Since the beginning of the conflict, Hungary has consistently opposed sanctions on Russian energy carriers and sending weapons to Ukraine. In March 2022, the Hungarian parliament issued a decree prohibiting the supply of weapons to Ukraine from the country's territory. Szijjarto explained that Budapest was seeking to secure the territory of Transcarpathia, where ethnic Hungarians live, since the supply of weapons through its territory would become a legitimate military target. The country's leadership has repeatedly stressed that Hungary stands for the early start of peace negotiations.