US President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to resolve the Ukraine conflict could soon become a reality and Budapest intends to help the Republican achieve that goal, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto has said.
Following a meeting in Washington on Wednesday with Trump’s candidate for National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, Szijjarto noted that the current US administration under President Joe Biden appears to only wish to prolong the Ukraine conflict and is trying to make it harder to establish peace after Trump takes office in January.
Szijjarto stated that in the US, the Democrats appear to be “on the side of war” while the Republican party is “on the side of peace.” Because of this, the issue of establishing peace in Ukraine became one of the key topics in his conversations with Waltz, the Hungarian diplomat said.
”The American Republicans and we, Hungarian patriots, think similarly, and even in some cases completely identically, about the most important things in the world,” Szijjarto said, noting that this provides a “very stable basis” for future bilateral relations between the two countries.
The diplomat added that Hungary is “pressing hard so that Donald Trump’s goal of ending this war quickly becomes a reality,” and warned that failure to achieve peace in Ukraine would increase the risk of escalation on a daily basis.
“We can only hope that nothing will happen in Ukraine before January 20 that will irreversibly change the situation and significantly complicate efforts to achieve peace,” the Hungarian minister said.
Meanwhile, Moscow has said that it has yet to receive a detailed plan from Trump or his team regarding a potential resolution of the conflict. However, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has stated in an interview with CNN that Russia would carefully examine such a plan when it is submitted, but noted that it would not agree to any concessions that compromise its national security interests.
Ryabkov also issued a warning to the outgoing Biden administration that Russia would respond to any provocations and urged the West not to underestimate Moscow’s resolve to defend its core interests using all means necessary.