Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga has commented on Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto’s social media post in which the latter criticised the words of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky regarding friendship with Hungary.
“I will answer in Hungarian style. You don’t need to tell the Ukrainian president what to do or say and when. He is the president of Ukraine, not Hungary. Hungary’s energy security is in your hands. Diversify and become independent from Russia like the rest of Europe,” Sibiga wrote on social network X on the evening of 24 August.
Before that, Péter Szijjártó, reacting to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski’s words, said that the Ukrainian president was “threatening Hungary”.
“Volodymyr Zelensky used Ukraine’s bank holidays to threaten Hungary. We strongly reject the Ukrainian president’s intimidation. We consider sovereignty and territorial integrity as fundamental values of international politics. That is why we respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of every country and expect the same in return,” he wrote on Facebook.
The Hungarian foreign minister said that “in recent days Ukraine has carried out serious attacks on our energy supply. An attack on energy security can be interpreted as an attack on sovereignty.”
He called on Zelensky to “stop making threats and stop jeopardising our energy security.”
Deliveries through the pipeline, which is used to bring Russian oil to Hungary, were cut off three times in August. The third strike on the Druzhba oil pipeline infrastructure – in Russia’s Bryansk region – was reported on the night of 22 August by the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Force, Robert Brovdi (“Magyar”). Previous strikes were on 13 August and 18 August.
Hungarian authorities have accused Ukraine of obstructing energy supplies to the country. After a previous such incident, when an oil refinery in Russia’s Tambov region was attacked on the night of 18 August, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga advised his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjarto to complain to Moscow.
On 22 August, Hungary and then Slovakia said that oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline from Russia to those countries had stopped again because of the strike on the pipeline. This came a few days after the Hungarian Foreign Ministry said on 20 August that deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline had resumed after the previous strike.