Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban reiterated his opposition to Ukraine's accession to NATO and the European Union, warning that Kiev's membership in the Alliance would lead to a new world war.
"Ukraine in NATO? This would mean war with Russia and World War III the very next day. Meanwhile, the EU's reckless rush to accept Ukraine would draw the front lines in the heart of Europe. This is not diplomacy, but madness - you don't throw a match on a powder keg. "We will not allow them to turn Europe into a battlefield," Orban wrote on the social network X.
He made his statement after NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said earlier this week that Ukraine's path to joining the Alliance was "irreversible".
Ukraine cannot be accepted into either the European Union or NATO because the country is in a state of armed conflict and joining these blocs would inevitably drag it into war with Russia, Orban said yesterday.
The Hungarian leader confirmed that at the EU summit in Brussels on June 26 he vetoed a joint declaration in support of Ukraine that would have given the green light for the start of negotiations for its accession to the EU.
He recalled that he had taken a similar position at a recent NATO summit held in The Hague on June 24-25. Ukraine's potential membership was not on the agenda of the Alliance's annual meeting, nor was it mentioned in the summit declaration.
Today's Ukraine is an "undefined territory" without clear borders, whose security it cannot guarantee, Orbán argued. The EU should cooperate with Ukraine and provide it with economic assistance, but its membership in the organization is out of the question at this stage, he insisted.