Hungary’s foreign minister accused his Polish counterpart of lying as tensions over Warsaw and Budapest’s disagreement over Ukraine escalated into a diplomatic spat.
Relations soured over Budapest’s decision to maintain warm economic and diplomatic relations with Russia. Hungary also blocked European Union reimbursements to member states that had transferred ammunition to Kyiv.
Tensions escalated when a new government took power in Poland in December, sparking controversy over issues such as the rule of law or LGBT rights.
In an interview with the online magazine Visegrad Insight published on Monday, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said his Hungarian counterpart Péter Szijjártó appeared to have changed his mind about the Polish proposal to hold an EU meeting in Ukraine. Szijjártó stated:
[Radosław Sikorski] has crossed another line and lied when he claimed that I enthusiastically supported his nonsense proposal to hold the next informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Ukraine.
Sikorski had an impression that Szijjártó was satisfied with the proposal, according to Polish foreign ministry spokesperson Paweł Wroński.
“If it was otherwise, it means that he [Sikorski] interpreted the behaviour of Minister Szijjártó in the wrong way.”
On Saturday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave a speech in which he accused Poland of hypocrisy and buying Russian oil through intermediaries.
They lecture us on moral grounds, they criticise us for our economic relations with Russia, and at the same time they are blithely doing business with the Russians.
Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski retaliated on Sunday by saying that Poland was not doing business with Russia. He also asked why Orbán did not “create a union with Putin and some authoritarian states of this type” instead of staying in the EU and NATO.
