After the EU Foreign Affairs Council: Hungarian minister says Brussels announces new pro-Ukrainian war initiatives

The European Commission has announced new pro-Ukraine war initiatives involving “even more money, weapons and military advisors” being sent to Ukraine, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, said after an EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.

Szijjártó told a press conference that the plan is to increase the value of arms shipped to Ukraine to 40 billion euros this year.

He said this includes voluntary fast aid of 2 million rounds of ammunition costing five billion euros, adding that the aid cannot be mandatory because Hungary has blocked the EU from making such transfers as official policy.

He noted that Hungary has steered clear of sending military advisors to Kyiv as the government’s position is that such a mission should only operate outside Ukrainian territory, otherwise there would be a serious risk of the war escalating in Europe’s direction. “This is a red line for us,” he said.

Szijjártó said that regarding the 17th new package of sanctions against Russia, there were demands that it should be “massive and very robust.” His Ukrainian counterpart had even “demanded” restrictions on Russian energy purchases and the nuclear industry. “We won’t accept this at all,” he said, noting ongoing direct negotiations between the US and Russia and it was not the time to put Russian government members on the sanctions list. While “some people here” wanted to restrict the movement of Russian diplomats within the EU, talks between the US and Russian were under way to restore the operations of diplomatic missions, he added.