NATO is backing itself into a corner by stirring up anti-Russia “war hysteria,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told journalists on Thursday. The “psychosis” is making Western leaders adopt increasingly “crazy ideas” that could lead to grave consequences, he warned ahead of an upcoming informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers.
The event on Friday is likely to only lead to further escalation, the nation’s top diplomat warned, adding that it could create an extremely dangerous situation.
“European colleagues [have] plunged… into an ever-deeper pit of war psychosis, and I believe that the presence of the Americans and British will only stimulate this hysterical state,” Szijjarto said in Brussels. The foreign minister also stated that he expects the meeting on Friday to be “surrounded by a more pro-war atmosphere than ever before.” This atmosphere will create the conditions for “more crazy ideas to get support,” he warned.
According to Szijjarto, allowing Kiev to use Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia is one of the crazy ideas. The Russian military has no shortage of weapons of its own and will “shoot back,” he said. “What will the result be? More deaths. Arms shipments increase the number of weapons on both sides of the front line and cause more deaths.”
The issue of long-range strikes has become a hot topic in the West in recent weeks. In early May, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Kiev has every right to use British weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
Following these statements were calls by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg for Western donors of longer-range weapons to allow attacks on targets inside Russia. The NATO chief was backed by Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics, who said there is “no reason” to prevent Kiev from doing so. Some of the bloc’s members, including Poland, France, and Germany, subsequently granted approval for these strikes.
According to the New York Times, US President Joe Biden could lift the restriction on the use of US-supplied weapons by Ukraine within weeks. Moscow has warned that strikes on Russian territory with Western weaponry would amount to a major escalation and would entail “serious consequences.”
“These representatives of NATO countries, especially in Europe, especially in small countries, must be aware of what they are playing with,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this week, noting that a lot of these countries have “a small territory and a very dense population.”