“Hungary, get over the dark side!” – Orbán protested against Russia’s policy in Lithuania «Standard
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, one of the leaders of the European Union member states, speaks out against further tightening of sanctions against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. According to the Hungarian prime minister, according to Orbán, Hungary’s energy and food supply and “strategic peace” will be proclaimed by Hungary that it must stay out of the war, so the government does not punish .
The Prime Minister’s ambivalent stance on the war, whose good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin continue to be the subject of domestic and international public discourse, has been sharply criticized not only against Hungary in recent times.
A few days ago, the President of Ukraine, Volodomir Zelenski, spoke at the European Council that Orbán was not strong enough in favor of sanctions against Russia. In the video check-in, Zelensky called his Orbans on a group of statues erected for the victims of the Arrow Cross terror on the banks of the Danube, and then likened the sin of Nazi Germany to Russian aggression. “You have to decide once and for all who you are with. You are an independent country“The Ukrainian president said.” The position of the Hungarian government on other issues was also criticized by the V4s, who generally agree with Budapest, and the Polish ruling party.
And now in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, they have not only criticized Orbán’s policy towards Russia, but have even staged a protest against it.
The organization called Momentum Vilnius (which has nothing to do with the Hungarian Momentum Movement) is a “Hungary, step up to the dark side“ (Hungary, switch from the dark side) organized a protest in Lithuania, the Hungarian embassy in Lithuania convened a demonstration that the organizers said they wanted to persuade the Orbán government to take part in the attempts to curb the war in Ukraine by abandoning the two-bottle politicization . True to the name of the demonstration, the organizers on Facebook advertised the symptoms with images reminiscent of the Star Wars sci-fi film series.
Mérce contacted two members of Momentum Vilnius, Justina With Motiejauskaitė and Lukas Tamulynas. When asked, Momentum is a left-wing youth movement within the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, LSDP), which aims to push Lithuania towards more leftist views between 2012 and 2016, leading the party’s direction. Tamulynas told our newspaper that they were already thinking about organizing a protest against Viktor Orbán, who they believe had long represented Putin’s interests in EU politics.
To our question, in which areas do they think the Hungarian government has not acted properly in Ukraine, Justina Motiej emphasized the refusal to allow arms shipments, and Lukas Tamulynas called it unacceptable that citizens were doing everything they could to help Ukrainian refugees, while the authorities saw those forced to leave their country because of the war as a mere “immigration issue”.
Motiejauskaitė believes that Hungary and the rest of the Union should become independent of Russia in economic terms, as Vladimir Putin’s regime, according to activist Momemntum Vilnus, is not an ally of Europe but an aggressor heated by empire-building desires.
The question arises as to how to respond to the Hungarian government’s argument that the population will drink the juice of harsh sanctions against Russia in the face of rising food and energy prices. According to Lukas Tamulynas, it is important to be aware that
the cost of saying no to Putin’s bloody tyrant is a thousand times what we would have to pay if we did not fight against the Russian invasion, risking the war reaching our home.
Tamulynas sees European countries, including Hungary, accepting cheap Russian natural gas, effectively allowing them to bribe themselves and becoming committed to Russia.
Justina Motiejauskaitė acknowledged that the sanction could indeed have serious economic consequences, but it is worth noting how much more Ukrainian civilians are now suffering or forced to leave their homes destroyed by the Russian army. He says it is vital that national governments and EU organizations make sure that measures taken against Russia do not negatively affect citizens with legal social status.
Activists of the pro-government movement Momentum Vilnius said there were some similarities in the responses of the Hungarian and Lithuanian leaders, led by center-right Ingrida Šimonytė, to the crisis in Ukraine. According to them, the Vilnius government is not prepared to take care of the refugees arriving in the country, which in this case will ultimately be left to civilian volunteers. However, both noted as an important difference that the leadership of the 2.8 million Baltic state is aware of Putin’s bialm ambitions and is not trying to downplay it with Viktor Orbán.
According to Lukas Tamulynas, the Hungarians in Ukraine should be familiar with the fact that the events are ringing only because, during the revolutions of 1848-1849 and 1956, Hungary had already experienced the constant destruction of the Russian invasion.
According to the Lithuanian left-wing activist, Hungary, which has repeatedly faced the Russian Empire with wolf eyes, must leave the dark side and join the Putin aggression among the emerging countries.