Steven N.
As previously reported, the Ukrainian President personally addressed Viktor Orbán during a speech to the European Council. Zelenskyy spoke firmly to the Hungarian Prime Minister for nearly two minutes, saying, among other things:
Hungary … I want to stop here and be honest. Once and for all. You have to decide for yourself who you are with. You are a sovereign state….
Listen, Viktor, do you know what’s going on in Mariupol? Please, if you can, go down to your waterfront. Look at those shoes. And you will see how mass killings can happen again in today’s world.
The government and its opinion leaders in the media were not particularly impressed with the Ukrainian President’s harsh words towards Orbán.
While Hungary and the Hungarian people are helping Ukrainian citizens fleeing the war, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is openly intervening in the Hungarian election campaign alongside the left-wing opposition!
–posted Fidesz Member of Parliament Gyula Budai (pictured) on social media with apparent outrage.
Pro-government booster Philip Rákay immediately shot back, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Zelenskyy?” in a post that has over 9,200 “likes.” Dániel Bohár, a reporter for government-friendly Pesti TV, commented that he did not want to die for Ukraine, but live for Hungary.
For his part, Viktor Orbán rejected the Ukrainian President’s demands, “because they are contrary to the interests of our country.” Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó took exception to Zelenskyy’s style and personality.
On Saturday, Viktor Orbán again mentioned the criticism leveled at him by the Ukrainian President, telling state-run media that Zelenskyy needed to be understood for us to criticize him, but “we are not Ukrainians, nor Russians, but Hungarians.”
“Dying with Ferenc Gyurcsány”
Shortly after his previous post on Zelenskyy, MP Gyula Budai attacked Hungary’s joint opposition over the war. In a post with the title, “Dying with Ferenc Gyurcsány,” he called upon nearly every leading opposition leader to volunteer in Ukraine.
Budai’s post perpetuated the government’s narrative that the opposition and their prime ministerial candidate, Péter Márki-Zay, would send Hungarian soldiers to Ukraine and plunge the country into war.
But as Márki-Zay said earlier in a Partizán interview as well as on ATV, if NATO decides to provide military assistance to Ukraine, Hungary, as a member of the alliance, should contribute to this effort, as it did in the war in Afghanistan.
[Magyar Hang][Photo: Official page of Member of Parliament Gyula Budai / Facebook]
Orbán’s media-supported vulture attitude to the war in Ukraine allows him to keep the propaganda focused on the opposition and LGBT + Soros/Biden/EU conspiracy theories up to the coming election, but the can of worms he tries to keep the lid on could very easily pop immediately after the election.
Seems to me that the media cycle is kind of out of Fidesz’s control at the moment. The next week should be interesting.
“We are not Ukrainians, nor Russians, but Hungarians.”
The complete text — “we are not Ukrainians, nor Russians, nor Europeans, but Hungarians.”
Well, someone has to say the quiet part out loud.
Thank you for the additional detail i.e. the regime comment “nor Europeans”. Apparently, Orban had another slip of the tongue!