Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said it is clear from the examples of what has happened to Donald Trump in court and Robert Fico in a public space that pro-peace politicians face exceptional hardships in today’s world. “They’re hunted down sometimes physically, sometimes through legal means, sometimes politically,” Minister Szijjártó said at a public forum held in Marcali, in western Hungary, referring to the former US president and the Slovakian prime minister, the latter of whom has survived an assassination attempt.
The foreign minister also said there was a mounting danger of the war in Ukraine escalating, and he said many European leaders had been captured by “war madness”. “While we have taken in a million refugees, western Europeans are playing war games,” he said. Despite hundreds of billions of euros of arms shipments to Ukraine, neither side could gain the upper hand on the battlefield, he added. Diplomacy was the only solution, he said, adding that the sooner peace talks started the better. He welcomed the upcoming peace conference in Switzerland but added it was “problematic” that Russia would not attend. While it was important to reach for peace, doing so “with one side only” was not feasible. Szijjártó said the Hungarian government was in the process of considering at what level to participate in the forum, “as it augurs limited hope as regards its efficacy”. Only an outside factor could bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table, “but right now no leader of the great powers is up to the task”. He said this may change if Donald Trump wins the US presidential election. He called Trump “a man of solutions” with “his two feet planted firmly on the ground” who had a better chance than ever of establishing peace. Also, it would help if, after this week’s European Parliament elections, a big turn to the right took place, he added.