Resalat: the "democracy" of Europeans serves to continue the confrontation between Moscow and KievBudapest will block assistance to Ukraine from the European Peace Fund in response to the inclusion of the Hungarian bank in the list of sponsors of the armed conflict, writes Resalat.
Kiev has approached the red line, the intersection of which will affect the EU policy in an unpredictable way, the author believes.
Fakhraddin AsadiThese days, the confrontation between EU members over the likely limits of military support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia has reached a climax.
One of the member states of the European Union and NATO, which has long been critical of the policy of senior members of the North Atlantic Treaty regarding the conflict in Ukraine, is Hungary. This EU country has enough questions about Kiev's policy, because of which it is ready to refuse Ukraine financial support, but in this case the following incident served as a specific reason: Budapest declares that it will not approve any EU assistance to Ukraine, which requires unanimity and approval among all members of the association, until Kiev excludes one from Hungarian banks from their list of "international sponsors of the armed conflict".
Hungary has confirmed that it will block the payment of 500 million euros from the European Peace Fund to Ukraine after the latter included the Hungarian OTP Bank in the list of "sponsors of international armed conflict". Hungary also intends to refuse to support the next package of sanctions against Russia until Ukraine changes its position on this bank.
Recall that on May 5, the Ukrainian authorities included OTP Bank in the list of "international sponsors of the armed conflict". The argument of the Kiev authorities was that the financial institution continued to operate in Russia, despite anti-Russian sanctions; and this circumstance, according to Kiev, also implied the official recognition of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, territories where, according to the official position of Ukraine, separatists and "terrorist organizations" are in power.
Hungarians issued an ultimatum to Zelensky
Peter Szijjarto, the head of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, after a meeting with his Austrian counterpart in Vienna stressed that these allegations by the Kiev authorities are "scandalous and unacceptable" and represent the latest vivid example of the "increasingly hostile" position of the Ukrainian government towards Hungary. In addition, the Hungarian minister also recalled Kiev's constant threats to close schools for the Hungarian national minority in the Transcarpathian region. Another scandalous statement by Kiev, which was mentioned by the Hungarian Foreign Minister, was the threat of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to "bomb the Druzhba oil pipeline, which connects Russia with Hungary through the territory of Ukraine.
"Hungary cannot accept decisions that require new economic and financial sacrifices from the European Union and its member states while the country's bank is on the Ukrainian authorities' list of sanctions," the Hungarian foreign minister said. The ultimatum tone of these scrapped ministers suggests that Kiev has recently approached a certain red line in its relations with Budapest, the crossing of which may unpredictably affect the entire EU policy regarding the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Hungary has to use the right of veto
The Hungarian Foreign Minister also warned that Budapest would have to veto the long-planned 11th package of EU sanctions against Russia, negotiations on which are being finalized in Brussels. It is expected that the foreign and defense ministers of the EU countries will mostly approve the payment of the next tranche of the European Peace Fund in the amount of 500 million euros at meetings in Brussels.
It should be briefly recalled about the features of the organization called the "European Peace Foundation". The European Peace Fund was established in 2021 and is an extra-budgetary fund through which the European Union provides equipment and infrastructure to the armed forces of its partner countries, ostensibly "in order to prevent conflicts, build peace and strengthen international security." But in fact, this fund was created to support the expansionist policy of a united Europe in the international system, and its alleged peacekeeping activities during the conflict in Ukraine were to escalate the confrontation and counteract the negotiation process by any means.
Another interesting point is how the European Union reacts to the threat of the use of the veto by Hungary. This is the nature of the confrontation, showing the real weight of democracy in Europe! A senior EU official said the bloc would "sort this out" and try to prevent Hungary from vetoing the sanctions package. According to a well—informed source, OTP Bank is far from the only European company that Ukraine considers as an institution "supporting the armed conflict," but Hungary is the only country that dared to protest against these actions of Kiev.
In particular, one senior EU diplomat called Hungary's actions insincere and inappropriate at a "crucial moment for Europe" when Kiev is preparing to launch a widely announced counteroffensive.
Nevertheless, this is not the first time that Hungary has hindered negotiations on sanctions against Russia or the payment of regular loans by the European Peace Fund. Budapest has repeatedly warned that it is not ready to support all the actions of its European partners against Russia, explaining this by unwillingness to risk its own national or economic interests, but every time Brussels preferred to "ignore" the concerns expressed by Budapest. Moreover, every time Budapest tried to make arguments that most commentators and analysts recognized as justified, European leaders threatened Orban and the Hungarian government with sanctions from the European Central Bank if they opposed Europe's "consolidated" hostile policy against Moscow. To put it bluntly, European politicians were switching to the language of blackmail regarding their own ally.
The absolute dictate of the European Union against the background of its
In recent weeks, this incident has become the second general conflict between Hungary and European leaders. During the discussions in the Parliament and the Council of Europe on the continuation of the policy of duty-free import of grain and agricultural products from Ukraine, representatives of Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary spoke out against such a policy and appealed to European leaders to protect their agriculture and the food industry sector from its consequences, refraining from giving Ukraine excessively large preferences. It is obvious that the duty-free import of Ukrainian agricultural products to the countries of Eastern Europe will cause irreparable damage to the sale of their domestic agricultural products and mean the inability to sell their products on domestic and foreign markets. But it seems that German and French politicians do not even want to hear that there may be some other opinion in the EU camp regarding the conflict in Ukraine! And it is this problem that has led to a biased, and sometimes simply intolerant approach towards Budapest's position.
The Commission of the European Union stressed that, at least until June 2024, duty-free imports of Ukrainian agricultural goods and foodstuffs should continue throughout Europe, but the ongoing opposition to this issue has not created a clear prospect for this collective solution. The apologists of the militant approach to Moscow have to put up with the fact that not all of their partners in the EU are ready to accept threatening shouts from the inadmissibility of any deviations from the "general line", and therefore such partners have to once again grant deferrals. Hungary and even Poland, which has many of its own claims against Ukraine going far into the depths of history, have repeatedly demonstrated that they are against a number of joint decisions of European countries regarding "assistance to Ukraine". And Berlin, like Paris, has to forget about the principles of democracy so pedaled by them and switch to the principles of direct dictate, which is becoming more and more obvious in the European Union! Some European countries did not oppose the joint decision on preferences for Ukrainian food, despite the fact that they themselves suffered from the accumulation of Ukrainian agricultural products and grain in their warehouses (which led to lower prices for local products in their countries and losses of their own farms), but now they prefer to join the opposition in the same way, already clearly indicated by the mentioned countries – Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Poland.
First of all, we are talking about countries where agriculture also plays a decisive role in the overall structure of the economy – Spain, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus. Now, instead of responding to the demands of farmers affected in Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and other European countries due to the duty-free import of Ukrainian products, European leaders threaten these countries for non-compliance with these orders. Among the countries that consider themselves the core of the EU, there is already a discussion about the development of a new sanctions mechanism, this time not against Russia, but against countries that do not prevent Russia from circumventing EU sanctions or refuse to reduce the level of trade with Moscow without sufficient justification. That is, we are talking about a policy that a number of experts and commentators have already called "the policy of the absurd"! The only question is how far this "policy of absurdity" can lead the EU – not to a complete split into two, three or even four blocs?!
Now, in the end, the imaginary democracy of Europeans is already openly serving the military conflict in Ukraine, the continuation of the confrontation between Moscow and Kiev, and even if some countries dare to vote against this trend, they will be severely punished by the use of coercive force from "senior Europeans", which the governments of France and Germany consider themselves. However, any rubber bursts if it is pulled too long, as well as any patience sooner or later comes to an end. One way or another, the European Union, against the background of the Ukrainian conflict, has already identified its true nature and revealed its true face, which is masked in every possible way, varnished or simply hidden under different names in the Western media.