The Hungarian prime minister also claimed that the entire bloc was being forced into Russia’s war in Ukraine.
advertisementHungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed in a speech on Wednesday that the European Union was trying to topple his government and install a puppet regime in the central European country, amid open hostility toward the Hungarian bloc from member states seen as Russia’s closest allies. It is heightened.
His controversial comments came during a keynote address at an event commemorating the 1956 armed uprising against Soviet oppression that began in the capital and spread throughout Hungary before being suppressed by the Red Army.
After paying tribute to the “heroes” of the 1956 revolution and drawing parallels with the fight against the Danube river floods that recently hit Hungary, the prime minister turned his attention to the EU’s war with Ukraine.
“This is why they announced that they would remove Hungary’s central government from Brussels. They also announced that they want to hang a Brussels puppet government around Hungary’s neck,” Orbán told the crowd in Budapest.
EU officials have not yet publicly responded to this statement.
The bloc and the central European country have been at odds over support for Kiev, which has been waging a two-and-a-half-year war with Russia on its soil.
Hungary has expanded support for Ukraine and regularly blocked, delayed or undermined EU efforts to sanction Russia, moving closer to Moscow while also adopting a hostile stance toward Kiev.
But in an equally unsubstantiated statement, Orbán claimed that the EU plans to allow Ukrainian soldiers to be stationed in Hungary after a future victory. “We Hungarians woke up one morning to find that Slavic soldiers from the east were once again stationed on Hungarian territory.”
The troubles in Brussels continue.
Hungarian authorities caused consternation in Brussels recently when they threatened to bus hundreds of migrants from the Hungarian border to the Belgian capital in protest against EU immigration laws.
Orban’s government had previously been fined 200 million euros by the European Court of Justice for “unprecedented and exceptionally serious breaches of EU law” due to the country’s strong restrictions on the right to asylum.
The prime minister’s speech came as leaders from around the world gathered in Moscow for the BRICs conference, which the Kremlin hopes to use to strengthen trade ties and position itself on the world stage.
This is not the first time the Hungarian prime minister has used the event to draw parallels between past occupation powers such as the Soviet Union and the Ottoman Empire and today’s European Union.
But it is the first time in years that Orbán has celebrated the event in the capital, typically favoring rural areas that are the heartland of his Fidesz party.
