Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjarto said that due to Ukraine’s inclusion of the Hungarian bank OTP Bank in the list of war sponsors, Budapest “will be very difficult” to negotiate new sanctions against Russia with the EU.
.in_text_content_22 { width: 300px; height: 600px; } @media(min-width: 600px) { .in_text_content_22 { width: 580px; height: 400px; } }
Last week, Ukraine’s National Corruption Prevention Agency announced that it had placed OTP Bank, the largest Hungarian bank, on the list of war sponsors due to the position of the bank’s management to continue operations in Russia and the de facto recognition of the so-called L/DPR.
OTP Group is one of the leaders in the financial services market in Central and Eastern Europe. OTP Bank has subsidiaries in Russia, Ukraine, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Montenegro and Romania.
OTP is one of the 50 largest banks in Russia, and is one of the market leaders in a number of areas. It serves more than 2.2 million customers and is present in more than 1,850 locations in the terrorist state, underscoring its importance to the Russian economy, which is fighting and trying to circumvent Western sanctions.
How Budapest “Bulls”
Earlier, Szijjarto said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “has no right to assess the behavior of Budapest as a member of NATO.”
This is how he commented on the statement of the head of the Ukrainian state that in Hungary one can see the political confusion of the elites, since the NATO country calls the aggressor country, Russia, a friendly one.
Luckily, it’s not up to him. The Hungarian people have already paid a very high price for the war. If this statement means: “I respectfully thank the Hungarians for accepting and taking care of more than a million refugees from Ukraine, and I respectfully thank them for the continuous sending of aid!”, then please and you can count on us in the future, – said the representative of Budapest.
In addition, the Hungarian Foreign Minister accused the US Ambassador David Pressman of “war propaganda” and said that Budapest belongs to the “peace camp”.
US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman met with refugees and aid workers near the Ukrainian border. He noted that Szijjarto had visited Russia five times since the start of the war to discuss energy issues, but had never met Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, and that while other countries opted for independence from Russian energy, Hungary was strengthening its relations with Gazprom.
In response, Szijjártó called Pressman “a master of military propaganda” and stated that he should not think “as if smarter than the Hungarians themselves.”
And on April 20, at an event organized by the leading Hungarian Fidesz party, they posted a map of Great Hungary, which includes the regions of today’s Ukraine, Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia and Serbia.
The event was called “Peace and Security”, in particular, the head of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, Szijjarto, attended it.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.