Hungarian foreign policy is pragmatic – Szijjártó reacts to French Foreign Minister's remark about betrayal

“Hungarian foreign policy is pragmatic and transparent. This is also true of Hungarian-Russian relations. We say exactly the same thing in public as we do at the negotiating table. Unlike French diplomacy, which constantly negotiates with the Russians behind closed doors,” Péter Szijjártó wrote on X after French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called Hungary’s discussions with Russian officials on sanctions a betrayal of solidarity among European Union member states.

The Hungarian Foreign Minister also took issue with Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent visit to Transcarpathia. The Ukrainian President reported on the visit by saying: “I met with representatives of the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia, including soldiers. We talked and discussed a number of important topics. First and foremost, preparations for the coming winter, the relocation of businesses, the role of local governments in replenishing the budget, the return of Ukrainians living abroad, and the rehabilitation of soldiers and veterans.”

In response, Szijjártó said: “President Zelenskyy should not be visiting Transcarpathia and putting on a show just three days before the parliamentary elections; instead, he should urgently put an end to forced conscription, openly hunting people down in the streets, and immediately restore the (Hungarian) minority’s rights, including the right to the use of their native language, which were taken away from the Transcarpathian community in 2015.”

A consortium of investigative outlets released new recordings of phone conversations between Péter Szijjártó and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday. According to the recordings, Szijjártó offered his Russian counterpart to deliver European Union documents to his desk via the Hungarian Embassy in Moscow, and their discussion ahead of Viktor Orbán’s July 2024 visit to Moscow was also revealed. In another recording, he can be heard questioning the Russian foreign minister about the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

The investigative report claims that the Hungarian government has systematically used the issue of the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia as a weapon to stall and slow down Ukraine’s EU accession negotiations.

This was not the first leaked excerpt from a conversation between the two foreign ministers. VSquare, FrontStory, Delfi Estonia, The Insider, and the Ján Kuciak Investigative Center published the first part of their series of articles on Hungarian-Russian relations last week. In it, they reported that Péter Szijjártó had repeatedly acted in the Kremlin’s interests at European Union meetings and consultations in recent years, and regularly briefed the Russian foreign minister on developments in the EU. According to the leaked audio recordings, Szijjártó made efforts to have sanctioned Russian individuals and organizations removed from the EU sanctions list, and to this end, he also cooperated closely with Pavel Sorokin, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Energy.