Hungarian foreign minister yesterday accused his Polish counterpart of lying as tensions over differences between Warsaw and Budapest regarding Ukraine turned into a diplomatic dispute, reported Reuters, quoted by BTA.
Once close allies, relations between Poland and Hungary have soured over Budapest's decision to maintain warm economic and diplomatic ties with Russia and, more recently, Hungary's blocking of the European Union reimbursing funds to member states that have provided ammunition to Kiev.
Tensions became even more pronounced when a new pro-European government came to power in Poland in December, ending a period in which Warsaw and Budapest were allies on issues such as the rule of law or the rights of the LGBT+ community.
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In an interview with the online magazine "Visegrad Insight", published yesterday, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Szykorski said that his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjártó appeared to have changed his mind about the Polish proposal to hold an EU meeting in Ukraine after received instructions from Budapest.
"Radoslav Sikorski crossed another line and lied when he claimed that I had enthusiastically supported his stupid proposal to hold the next informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Ukraine,” wrote Szijjarto on his "Facebook" page.
A spokesman for the Polish Foreign Ministry said that Szykorski was under the impression that Szijarto had accepted the offer.
"If it was otherwise, it means that he (Shikorski) interpreted the behavior of Minister Sijarto in a wrong way”, said the spokesman Pavel Vronski.
This was just the latest in a series of sharp exchanges between the two governments in recent days, Reuters recalls.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave a speech on Saturday in which he accused Poland of hypocrisy and buying Russian oil through intermediaries. "They are lecturing us on moral grounds, criticizing us for our economic relations with Russia, while at the same time carelessly doing business with the Russians,” he said.
Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski told the PAP news agency on Sunday that Poland does not do business with Russia and asked why Orban did not "create an alliance with Putin and some authoritarian countries of that type" instead of remains a member of the EU and NATO.