Foreign minister: Good cooperation with Russia in Hungary’s interest

Close, mutually beneficial cooperation with Russia is in Hungary’s interest, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said after talks with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, in Budapest on Tuesday, adding that “our friends and allies hold the same position but they will not speak about it so openly”.

Bilateral cooperation with Russia has produced “practical and pragmatic” results, “despite a not too supportive international environment”, Szijjártó said.

• Number of flights to be increased between Russia and Hungary!

The minister pointed to the “extraordinary health and economic challenges” of recent months as well as the “humanitarian and security impacts of clearly ill-advised geopolitical decisions” and called for switching to “civilised international cooperation based on mutual respect”.

All through history “Hungary has always been better off when there was civilised cooperation beetween East and West rather than conflict”, he said.

Szijjártó said Hungary had “benefitted a lot” from its good relations with Russia in recent times, and cited joint Covid vaccination efforts as an example. He said that Hungary would not have been in a position to complete “Europe’s most successful vaccination drive” without the Russian Sputnik vaccine. He added that talks on producing Sputnik in Debrecen from the end of next year were “in an advanced stage”.

Szijjártó mentioned mutual investments as further areas of cooperation, the production of railway carriages for Egypt, as well as energy security. He also said that Hungary’s WizzAir would set up a base in Saint Petersburg, increase the number of flights between Budapest and Moscow from a weekly four to seven, and launch a new service between Budapest and Yekaterinburg.

Concerning energy, he said that an agreement on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline “has made clear that Russia will continue to be crucial for Europe’s gas supplies in future”.