Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has defended on Monday during his official visit to Belarus the need to stop arms shipments to Ukraine if the war is to be stopped.
«Hungary believes that the international community should take only those steps that will bring the war to an end. It is necessary to avoid any steps that could lead to escalation,» Szijjarto said after meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Sergei Aleinik in Minsk.
In this sense, he emphasized that Hungary is not supplying arms for this war, but it is providing «important humanitarian assistance to the people who are in a difficult situation», according to the Belta news agency.
«When we talk about peace, we see only one way, immediate truce and negotiations. Otherwise, there will be no peace,» remarked the Hungarian head of diplomacy, who upon his arrival in Minsk acknowledged that «many will be against this visit.»
However, he has assured that the intensity with which the fighting continues makes it necessary to sit down to negotiate peace. «Human lives must be saved now, and this can only be done peacefully,» he stressed on his Facebook profile.
«The war in Ukraine is escalating and more and more people are dying due to hostilities,» Szijjarto has pointed out, who trusts that the international community will not only act «in the name of peace as soon as possible» but also prevent an «escalation of the war.»
«Our position is clear. The channels of communication must be open. If we do not act in this way, the message of the call for peace could not be conveyed,» Szijjarto has defended.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been questioned by those who consider that it is taking a sideways position, if not directly in favor of Russia, which in recent years has in Hungary its main partner in the heart of the European continent.
Over the last year, relations between Kiev and Budapest have not been at their best and have been strained by this issue. A few weeks ago, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry summoned the Hungarian ambassador after Orbán compared the war in Ukraine to the war in Afghanistan.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
