Thanks to foreign activities, some of the war materials produced in Hungary may reach Ukraine if steps are not taken to prevent such a scenario, according to a report from Hungarian news outlet Magyar Nemzet. In a report delivered to Hungary’s parliament behind closed doors, the country’s domestic security services state there are already clear attempts to ship Hungarian arms to the front in Ukraine, along with other warring states.
The task of prevention is made significantly more difficult by the fact that if an arms and ammunition manufacturing company operating in Hungary is owned or transferred to a foreign country, it is already difficult to intervene in this trade process, especially if the munitions or military equipment manufactured in Hungary are delivered to the target country through intermediaries.
In principle, a so-called re-export license is required for the export of weapons and war materials, but they can also try to circumvent these restrictions. Specialists of the Hungarian intelligence service also shared specific information on the case with the national security committee of the parliament, at the last meeting of the committee.
Only certain aspects of this meeting have been shared with the press, but one key detail is that there are now actors operating both in Hungary and outside it that are seeking to funnel weapons made in Hungary to Ukraine. The domestic security service stated it was monitoring the situation and working to prevent this.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made it a key plank of his foreign policy to avoid being party to the war in Ukraine, including allowing for the shipment of weapons from Hungary to Kyiv. He has even blocked weapon shipments from merely transiting through his country.
According to sources speaking with Magyar Nemzet, attempts to influence the flow of weapons within Hungary pose a serious risk to national security, especially when war materials from the territory of Hungary end up in war zones, including those beyond Ukraine, such as warring states in Africa.
Zoltán Sas, the chairman of the parliament’s national security committee, confirmed to Magyar Nemzet that: indeed, foreign citizens are trying to influence the military production in our country.
“These persons carry out this activity both from within our federal system (from NATO member states) and from outside, and the goal is to deliver military materials or military equipment manufactured in our country to war zones, such as Africa or Ukraine.
