Leading Fidesz politician’s unusually strong statements about Russia

"As for the past 25 years, if we were not members of NATO right now, it would probably not be Ukraine defending itself against a Russian attack, but us," Zsolt Németh, chairman of the Hungarian Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee and a founding member of Fidesz, said in his speech at the Hungarian Atlantic Society's conference on Tuesday, according to Válasz Online. Although in the past, Németh has made several statements about Russia and NATO that contradict both official government communication and Fidesz's propaganda, he has never contradicted Orbán's position so directly.

Németh said that

“regardless of what President Putin's esteemed propagandists may say, NATO is not an anti-Russian organization, it has never planned to attack Russia and it is not planning to do so now, but it is capable of protecting its members from a Russian attack. The reason why Russia is unable to limit Hungarian sovereignty by military means is precisely because we are a member of NATO.”

According to the politician, “the fact that Russia sees this defense alliance as a threat is merely proof that it wants to exercise control over NATO members – or at least over some of them – and NATO is making this impossible. Russia's behavior says more about Russia than it does about us.”

Németh said that the Russians' goal is to undermine Hungarian sovereignty. They don't necessarily want to invade us, but rather to dictate what we should and shouldn't do, who we should ally ourselves with, what weapons we should have, what we should represent at international forums. And it is precisely NATO which provides Hungary with protection against such ambitions, so being a member of NATO is one of the most important components of Hungary's policy for safeguarding its sovereignty.

According to Zsolt Németh, because of the war in Ukraine, it is now that Hungary's membership in NATO is of the greatest importance since we joined 25 years ago, and therefore we must take a firm stand against efforts aimed at turning Hungarian public opinion against NATO. "Today, any attempt to mislead public opinion on NATO is a direct threat to the physical security and sovereignty of our country," he said, adding that using various tactics to undermine confidence in NATO and the importance of NATO membership in Central European countries is actually part of the Russian military strategy.

“...the constant repetition of the idea that the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out because of NATO is extremely harmful. According to this mantra, it is justified for the great powers, Russia and possibly China, to exercise control over their own spheres of interest. They consider it an unfavorable precedent that the world's sovereign countries are free to exercise their right enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter to choose their own allies.”

Válasz Online points out that Németh's current statement is made all the more significant by the fact that it was he who introduced Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in 2022 in Tusnádfürdő before the speech in which Orbán did exactly what Németh has now warned against.

At the time, Orbán said:

"The Russians have articulated their security needs very clearly, and in a way that is unusual in diplomacy, they even wrote them down and sent them to the Americans and to NATO. They put it in writing that they demand that Ukraine should never become a member of NATO, that Ukraine should declare this, that NATO itself should assure Russia of this, and that we should promise never to place weapons on the territory of Ukraine that could reach Russian territory. The West rejected this offer, and refused to negotiate about it. They said that NATO has an 'open door policy', that is to say that its doors are open, that anyone can apply and we will decide whether we want to admit them or not. And the consequence of this rejection is that today the Russians are using weapons to enforce their security demands, which they had previously sought to achieve through negotiation."