FM Szijjártó: Hungary and Vatican agree on issue of war

Hungary and the Vatican are on an equal footing as regards the issue of war and peace, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, said after meeting the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States in Vatican City on Friday, noting that both countries supported making peace in Ukraine as soon as possible.

According to a statement from the foreign ministry, Szijjártó‘s talks with Archbishop Richard Gallagher focused primarily on the war in Ukraine.

“We were in agreement that making peace these days requires enormous courage … as those who want peace and work for it along with pro-peace politicians are under enormous pressure,” the ministry quoted Szijjártó as saying. Those who are exerting pressure “have a legal, psychical and a political tool-kit”, he said.

“The legal tool is being used against Donald Trump on the other side of the Atlantic. The psychical one was unfortunately manifested in the attempt on the life of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico,” Szijjártó said. “The political one is sought to be applied against us in the form of proposals aimed at revoking our voting rights in the EU just to prevent that we could continue to block the spread of the war.”

He said that the war in Ukraine would “only have losers, no winners” and it was hard to predict “how many” because “a threat of escalation is growing by the day”.

The minister criticised a recent decision allowing the Ukrainian army to attack targets in Russia with weapons supplied by the United States and Germany and also criticised a statement on sending French training officers to Ukraine, arguing that those could increase the threat of a world war.