A close aide to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has sparked outrage by saying that Hungary would have fared better if it had not resisted the Soviet invasion in 1956, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
The agency notes that he said this in a comment to the Hungarian news website "Mandiner" this week, and has also criticized Ukraine's current efforts to push back Russian forces.
In an interview with the site, Orbán's political director, Balazs Orbán (the two are not related), also said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acted irresponsibly by deciding to oppose the Russian invasion in February 2022, provoking a war that resulted in many casualties.
The anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary in 1956 was brutally suppressed by the Red Army. The anniversary of the uprising, which is marked on October 23, is an important public holiday in Hungary. Nationalist Prime Minister Orbán, who became famous in 1989 for demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary, immediately declared that the "ambiguous" his aide's words were a mistake, while the leader of the Hungarian opposition condemned them as "treasonous".
In a statement to Hungarian national radio today, Prime Minister Orban noted that it was important to speak "very carefully and clearly" on such sensitive issues. "Now my political director has made an ambiguous statement, which is a mistake, because our society stood on the foundation of the 1956 revolution and grew out of it," said Orban, who has made the issue of national sovereignty a cornerstone of his rule.