The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, Péter Szijarto, confirmed the blocking of the next tranche of 500 million euros from the European Peace Fund, which finances the military equipment transferred to Ukraine to the member states.
This is reported by HVG.hu.
The minister, who is in Vienna, held a 16-minute briefing on his Facebook page about events related to the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Szijjarto has long criticized sanctions and characterized EU politicians as suffering from "military psychosis", which in many cases "lacks common sense" in decision-making.
Another object of Sijarto's criticism was Ukraine. He summarized the "hostile actions" of the Ukrainian government towards Hungary as follows: suspension of Transcarpathian Hungarian schools; OTP Bank was included by the Ukrainians in the list of international sponsors of the war; information that the President of Ukraine was allegedly considering the possibility of blowing up the Druzhba oil pipeline.
"Until the Ukrainians exclude the OTP from the list of international sponsors of the war, Hungary obviously cannot participate in the decision regarding the European Peace Fund and sanctions," Szijarto said.
With this, the head of the MFA confirmed the information that the Hungarian government is blocking payments from the peace fund, and also made it clear that all this is happening exclusively through OTP Bank.
Last week, the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption of Ukraine announced that it had included 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 "DPR"/"LPR".
The bank disagreed with the statements and stated that it has reduced its presence in Russia and is looking for opportunities to exit the Russian market.
Szijjarto previously stated that due to Ukraine's inclusion of the Hungarian bank OTP Bank in the list of war sponsors, Budapest "will find it very difficult" to agree with the EU on new sanctions against Russia.
