EU should show strategic composure in prolonging sanctions against Russia: Orban

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that “Whatever sanctions EU member states agree on, we’ll back them,” Hungary Today reports. 

 

In an interview with public news channel M1 on Sunday, he stressed that “strategic composure is necessary in time of war.”

 

Orbán reiterated his position that Hungary must “concentrate efforts on staying out of this armed conflict”, noting that the country took the same stand during the Kosovo War in 1999 and the Crimean conflict in 2015.

 

He said Hungary, as a neighbour of Ukraine, must avoid the situation of “confusion, anxiousness and hasty and rash decisions” common in time of war. “Strategic composure. That’s what’s necessary now,” he added.

 

He urged caution against all “rushed, off-the-cuff” decisions, that “may sound popular, but have unanticipated consequences” and pointed to the Hungarian left wing’s alleged proposal to send troops to the war zone as an example of a “lack of strategic patience”. “There is no need for that, just as there is no need to urge Hungary to send weapons to the region,” he said. “We’re a neighbouring country, and those weapons might be used to shoot at Hungarians, as Hungarians live in Transcarpathia, too,” Orbán added.