Hungary is in the minority with its pro-peace attitude in NATO
Although in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “nobody talks about how things can go wrong” due to the war in Ukraine, we must be ready for this as well, so the government must speed up the development of the armed forces, said Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky.
The new Minister of National Defense was a guest of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) lecture series. THE According to 24.hu in his speech, he stated that the armed conflict taking place in the neighborhood is not the “our war” therefore, its expansion must be prevented, because Hungary will not “to bleed for foreign interests”.
According to the NATO ban “we Hungarians are the only ones who, as sane people, want peace”, obsession “if not alone, we are at least in the minority with this opinion”.
As he said, Hungary’s situation is marked by an attacked-aggressor stance, in such a situation the aggressor obviously cannot be supported. He did not express himself more sharply than this, nor did he sharply condemn the initiation of the invasion.
Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky believes that it is “Ukrainians were trapped in a bag of death”, their losses were huge, so they withdrew their forces from the front in several places, so now a kind of re-planning phase has started for both sides. According to the head of the Ministry of National Defense, the basic factors favor the Russians, because while their army has 10,000 of the original 100,000 to 120,000 soldiers, 20,000 to 25,000 of the Ukrainians’ 80,000 soldiers have already died, the news portal wrote.
Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky called it extremely important that Hungary had started its armed forces reform years ago, which could not be implemented in the current situation. He pointed out that Hungarian defense spending will already reach two percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) next year, before the target date of 2024. He added that this ratio may have to be increased even further under the existing circumstances.
He says that it is necessary to accelerate the development of military forces, to replace the old Soviet technology with Western technology. The national defense also suffers from a serious shortage of soldiers, so the training framework for reservists must be simplified so that, for example, students can apply even during the summer holidays.
However, according to the 52-year-old politician, the main goal is to make the military career more attractive, so that young people change their previous plans, join the army voluntarily, and feel “important, right and cool thing” the defense of the homeland. This also requires the soldiers “good-looking” they can stand up to their contemporaries in uniform and with new, Hungarian-made weapons, he said.