Hungarian Minister to Newsmax: Blinken, Lavrov Talks on Ukraine Must Succeed

Hungarians are "crossing our fingers" for the talks between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva to reach a diplomatic solution on the matter of Ukraine, because "when there is an east-west conflict, we central Europeans are always losers," Hungary's Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Peter Szijjarto told Newsmax.

"Look we are a central European country, so we have a very, very clear understanding and lessons learned from history from our own history," Szijjarto said on Newsmax's "Rob Schmitt Tonight." "It says that whenever there was a conflict between East and West, the small central European countries were losers of that given conflict regardless what time the conflict took place, regardless of what was the nature of the conflict, regardless of what were the stakeholders."

Blinken met with European allies in Berlin on Thursday in hopes of presenting a united front before crisis talks with Russia that are aimed at keeping Moscow from an attack on Ukraine. He visited Kyiv on Wednesday and was meeting with ministers from Germany, France, and Great Britain on Thursday in Berlin.

Szijjarto said he would not speak about what Russia has planned, but he does know that in Hungary, it is of "major significance" that there will be a diplomatic path out of the tensions with Ukraine.

"If you want to have a diplomatic path, then you have to talk, so that's why we were very happy with the fact that President [Joe] Biden and President [Vladimir] Putin talked twice recently," said Szijjarto. "I hope that the talks will be continued, and I hope that to a certain level, Russia and the United States will be able to build a platform of communication. Otherwise, it's going to be very tough. You know we hated the time of Cold War, and we don't want Cold War to come back."

The minister also said it is "very complicated" to say whether the tensions in Russia or elsewhere in places like North Korea and China have become worse after Biden took office a year ago.

"It's very complicated to say whether it has any kind of a link with who is in power here in the U.S., and I definitely don't want to judge any administration of the United States because we respect the decisions of the American people about who they want to lead," Szijjarto said.

But when former President Donald Trump was in office, "we had the best time for the American-Hungarian political relations," he added. "The major dilemmas of global politics and the global economy haven't been reached by President Biden and our administration in a very similar way."

Trump spoke with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban by telephone Wednesday, said Szijjarto, and has endorsed his reelection.

Orban is facing a challenge from a coalition "from the far-right, from the antisemitics, to the far left, have been united against us," said Szijjarto. "I can recall those criticisms which were put on us because of the existence of these antisemitic party, which was always against us, and now that this antisemitic party unites with the liberals, with the socialists, with the greens with the former communists. No one has a say. No one says that this would be unacceptable or something like that. So it's double standards there."

The EU is also pushing back on Hungary and its conservative stance on issues such as immigration and LGBTQ issues, including on Hungary's stance on the availability of LGBTQ content to its country's minors, show host Rob Schmitt noted.

"We have the constitution speaking very clearly about what and how we think about family," Szijjarto responded. "According to [our] constitution, marriage can be made between one man and one woman. According to the constitution, a family consists of a father, a mother, and children, and according to the constitution, the father is a man, and the mother is a woman."

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