Viktor Orbán has recently been under fire from mainstream sources concerning his country’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Zbigniew Ziobro commented on Orbán’s current situation due to the cancellation of the Visegrád Four Defense Minister’s summit and the upcoming elections in Hungary. Ziobro is the Polish minister of justice and the head of Solidarity Poland party, a junior member of Poland’s governing coalition.
He emphasized that Orbán was not responsible for the Hungarian state being almost entirely dependent on Russian energy.
“After all, we are all aware that despite the expectations of mainstream environments whose favorite whipping boy is Orbán. It is Germany, not Hungary, which is the main entity blocking sanctions on Russia,” Zbigniew Ziobro explained in the Catholic radio program “Seven-Nine.”
He pointed out that Orbán, unlike German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, declared that he would not block a unanimous EU decision concerning sanctions. Scholz, meanwhile, has blocked such a decision.
Ziobro reminded that the decision on banning the transfer of gas and oil from Russia must be accepted by all EU countries, as only then would the sanctions make sense. In this context, the minister also pointed to the issue of cutting Russia from SWIFT, which Scholz had initially publicly supported and later done the opposite, with the Russian banks involved in energy still able to operate on the SWIFT system.
“So, it is Germany, not Hungary, which has once again broken its word. It is Germany, not Hungary, which has been imposing this kind of energy policy on the EU in recent years,” he added.
Ziobro noted that Hungary was suffering the consequences of this energy policy because it carried out its policy as part of the EU team.
Moreover, the justice minister also pointed to Germany’s refusal to supply weapons to Ukraine prior to the outbreak of the war despite Berlin being one of the most important arms exporters in the world.
“Therefore, it is German policy which is the main architect of the problems with harsh sanctions against Russia,” he stated.
