Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjarto spoke in an interview with 24.hu about pressure from the European Union on his country due to the fact that it prevents the introduction of anti-Russian sanctions and Ukraine's membership in the EU.
According to Szijjártó, on May 22, the EU Foreign Affairs Council will discuss the activities of the Hungarian bank OTP. The Ukrainian National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) awarded it the status of an “international war sponsor” in early May on the basis that the bank continues to operate in Russia, where it is one of the leading financial institutions, and also provides loans to the Russian military on preferential terms.
At the same time, Szijjarto said that the bank complies with "all the rules." According to him, Hungary will insist on the exclusion of the OTP bank from this list. This will be a condition for the approval by the Hungarian side of the 11th package of EU sanctions, as well as the transfer of European military tranches to Ukraine.
Hungary is Russia's only ally in the EU. It regularly blocks new packages of sanctions and slows down the process of Ukraine's accession to the EU. Hungarian officials usually attribute this to their "national interests". At the same time, Russia recently added Hungary to the list of “unfriendly” states anyway.
This time, Péter Szijjártó again complained that the Hungarians were paying too high a price for a war they "had nothing to do with" and declared his unwillingness to pay "an even higher price."