The West should not ignore Russian President Vladimir Putin's warnings regarding Moscow’s response to long-range Ukrainian strikes, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
On Thursday, Putin announced that Russia had used its new Oreshnik intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile to destroy a military-industrial facility in Dnipro (formerly Dnepropetrovsk) in Ukraine. The strike was carried out in response to Kiev’s attacks on internationally recognized Russian territory using US-made ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles, he said.
“We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against military facilities of those countries that allow the use of their weapons against our facilities, and in case of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond decisively and in mirror-like manner,” the Russian leader warned.
In an interview with Kossuth Radio on Friday, Orban, who is one of the few European leaders to maintain contact with Moscow during its conflict with Kiev, said the communication system in Russian society was significantly different from the one in the EU.
“Sometimes we, Western European decision-makers, do not take this into account” when dealing with Moscow, he stated.
The Hungarian prime minister cautioned that “if the [Russian] president says something, it is not chatter, it has weight and consequences.”
He added that politics in the West is 80% talk and just 20% action, with even the most high-ranking officials often making statements that are not followed by concrete moves.
It is not like that in Russia, he explained, warning that Putin’s words must be taken seriously and interpreted in the logic of war.
Orban urged the nations that are supporting Ukraine in the conflict to “act out of common sense or there might be problems.”
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that the US “will not be deterred” by what Moscow described as a “combat test” of its new intermediate-range ballistic missile. “We will continue to ensure that Ukrainians have what they need on the ground,” she said.
On Thursday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic also called on the West to heed Putin’s warnings. “If you think you can attack everything on Russian territory with Western logistics and weapons without getting a response, and that Putin will not use whatever weapons he deems necessary, then you either don’t know him or you’re abnormal,” Vucic said.