Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the government has banned three Ukrainian officials from Hungary, saying they were responsible for forced conscription in Ukraine. He added that the ministry had earlier proposed that they be placed on a European Union sanctions list.
The ministry cited Minister Szijjártó as commenting on the case of József Sebestyén, who had been recently beaten to death during forced conscription in Ukraine. Minister Szijjártó told a press conference after a meeting of a Hungarian-Uzbek mixed committee that the Council of Europe had confirmed reports of physical violence and torture during conscription in Ukraine.
Minister Szijjártó said that since a Hungarian had fallen victim to this, the government on Wednesday proposed placing three persons on a sanctions list in Brussels. The officials in question are the chief of staff of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, the commander of the Western Operational Command and the head of the mobilization Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
“While this is being done, we arranged today that all three persons should be banned from Hungary,” he said.
In response to a question, he said that freezing Hungary-Ukraine relations would bring great problems to Ukraine because Hungary was currently the largest electricity supplier of the neighbouring country, and several hundred million cubic metres of natural gas arrived in Ukraine from Hungary.
Minister Szijjártó added that in such situations, the international public and liberal politicians often tried to find scapegoats. “It was not we who took away the Ukrainian minority’s rights in Hungary. It was not we who stopped oil transports last year. It is not in Hungary that Ukrainian temples are set to fire. And it was not a Ukrainian who died during conscription in Hungary”.
