Szijjártó: Ukraine has summoned the Hungarian ambassador

Ukraine has summoned the Hungarian ambassador to Kyiv, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó announced on Facebook. Ukraine’s move comes just two days after Szijjártó summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to inform him that the Hungarian government would defend Hungarian sovereignty “by all means available”.

In his Wednesday post, Szijjártó noted that they were not surprised by this development. He also said that during the conversation with the ambassador, the Ukrainians objected to the fact that “the Hungarian people will express their opinion in a national petition about the intention of Brussels and Kyiv to spend Hungarian money on the operation and armament of Ukraine.”

"We still haven’t received an explanation as to why President Zelensky insulted Viktor Orbán so rudely, nor as to why the Ukrainian foreign minister has resorted to 'bringing up Hitler',"

he wrote. On Wednesday, Viktor Orbán also took a swipe at the Ukrainian leadership with a pointed quote from 19th-century Hungarian poet Sándor Petőfi.

Szijjártó said that based on what was said at the meeting in Kyiv, they are expecting the Ukrainians to interfere in the upcoming elections in order to help Fidesz’s challenger, the Tisza Party. He reiterated his statement from his Tuesday video message, when he declared that they will not allow this to happen.

The Hungarian and Ukrainian governments have been involved in intensive back-and-forth messaging over the past week. This latest round of tit-for-tat between the two governments began when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took a swipe at Viktor Orbán in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, saying that "every Viktor who is living off European money while trying to sell out European interests deserves a slap in the face." Orbán responded on Facebook in Hungarian, calling the Ukrainian president "a man in a tight spot" who “has been unable or unwilling to end a war for four years.”

Following the two leaders, the foreign ministers also engaged in a heated war of words, with Péter Szijjártó and Andrii Sybiha exchanging messages on X. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister wrote about "Orbán's master in Moscow", prompting Péter Szijjártó to accuse Ukraine of trying to influence the Hungarian elections because "you want a government that says yes to Brussels and is ready to drag Hungary into your war." Sybiha responded by saying that the Hungarian government should not worry about the Ukrainians, but rather the Hungarian voters, from which Minister Szijjártó concluded that “the Ukrainian Foreign Minister has just announced that the Ukrainian government will participate in the Hungarian elections. They will run under the name of Tisza.”