2024-07-28 12:32 update: 2024-07-30, 15:05
Fot. EPA/VALERIY SHARIFULIN/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN /
It is Hungary, not Poland, which conducts business with Russia, a Polish deputy foreign minister has said in response to the Hungarian prime minister accusing Warsaw of 'hypocritical' policy towards Moscow.
On Saturday, Viktor Orban was in Tusnad, in a region of Romania with a large ethnic Hungarian population, to take part in the annual Summer Free University for supporters of his ruling Fidesz party.
During his speech he condemned what he called wrong policies of the European Union, the whole West and the Polish government towards Russia.
"Poles are conducting hypocritical policies. They criticise us for our relations with the Russians, and they themselves conduct business with Russia through intermediaries. I have never seen such hypocrisy on the part of the state," Radio Europa Libera Romania quoted Orban as saying.
Reacting to the report, Poland's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Wladyslaw Teofil Bartoszewski said on Sunday that Orban's policy is currently anti-EU, anti-Ukrainian and anti-Polish, adding that Orban is currently blocking a PLN 2 billion (EUR 467 million) EU refund for Poland for military equipment transferred to Ukraine.
"We do not do business with Russia, unlike Prime Minister Orban, who is on the margins of international society - both in the European Union and NATO," Bartoszewski said.
He added that Orban's speech was also commented on very negatively by the US ambassador to Budapest on Sunday "because it was an attack on Poland, the USA, the European Union and NATO."
"I don't really understand why Hungary wants to remain a member of organisations that it doesn't like so much and which supposedly treat it so badly," Bartoszewski continued.
"Why doesn't (Orban - PAP) create a Union with Putin and some authoritarian states of this type? It's like this: if you don't want to be a member of a club, you can always leave," he added.
Orban also accused Poland of causing a change in the balance of power in Europe by weakening the Berlin-Paris axis in favour of a new configuration: London, Warsaw, Kyiv and the Baltic and Scandinavian countries.
This, according to him, weakens the Visegrad Group, a block of four Central European countries including also Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which was "Poland's old plan" based on the recognition of a strong Germany and Russia with a third important force, the Ukrainska Pravda portal wrote. (PAP)
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