Editorials & Other Articles

Some claims have merit. Some are a free-ride over what Hungary has long thought as essential self-interests.

* Budapest systematically weaponized the issue of Hungarian minority rights in Ukraine to stall EU accession negotiations.

There have been serious fallings out with Slovakia over this issue. They're "besties" I'm told, but Hungary's more than willing to go to the mat for Magyar speakers--and has since the '90s. Meanwhile, note that years ago Budapest kept banging at Ukraine for how it treated Hunguarian speakers in its far west, to the extent of handing out Hungarian passports to Hungarian speakers in an act that Ukraine and many others--long pre-Russian invasion--thought to be encouraging secession.

* Péter Szijjártó offered Sergey Lavrov to send EU documents through the Hungarian Embassy in Moscow

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This is a problem.

* Hungary and Slovakia, acting as Kremlin friends in the EU, pushed against restrictions of Russian energy supplies

And yet, both get a lot of energy from Russia. Without it, the EU would have trouble supplying it at the same cost and Sk and Hu would both have a lot of public unrest because populace. Note that the closer you are to the USSR, the more dependent you were on the USSR. Slovakia, esp., because the Soviet Socialists dumped a lot of $ in Slovakia's heavy industry--just for the '90s to roll around to tell Slovakia that that investment was in Europe-incompatible or often yielded production far inferior to European standards.

* Budapest also supported the Kremlin’s “achievements” of the Alaska Summit.

* Leaked audio reveals a strikingly deferential, submissive attitude from Szijjártó toward Lavrov.

These are two examples of the same thing. They suck up. Because they are reliant on Russia, still. And Europe's busy messing with their own energy infrastructure so it's not like Europe has a lot to spare. Still, less of a lickspittle would be a good thing.