Hungary will deploy soldiers and military equipment in the areas of its territory bordering on Ukraine, announced this Tuesday the Magyar Minister of Defense, Tibor Benko.
“If there is an escalation of the situation in Ukraine, there will not only be war activities in the east of the country, but also could expand to Kiev” and the border areas with Hungary, warned the minister, quoted by the local agency ITN.
He explained that the military must monitor the eastern borders, with Ukraine, to ensure that armed groups cannot enter the country.
In addition, the country is preparing for the eventual arrival of Ukrainian refugees and the related humanitarian tasks that it must organize in this regard, Benko added.
The first units will arrive this afternoon in the region, the minister announced, without specifying the magnitude of the contingents to be deployed.
Relations between Hungary and Ukraine have been tense for yearssince on the one hand Budapest accuses its neighbor of not respecting the rights of ethnic minorities in the country, including the Magyar, of some 150,000 people, while Kiev accuses the Central European country of supporting Russia’s policies.
In fact, the Hungarian Prime Minister, the ultranationalist Viktor Orbán, is one of Moscow’s best community allies and in the past has criticized the sanctions imposed by the European Union on Russia for its annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
Until now, the Orbán government, unlike the vast majority of the rest of the EU’s partners and the international community, has not condemned the Russian decision to recognize the independence of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, located in the east of Ukraine.
However, he did advance that Hungary shares the joint position of the European Union in relation to Ukraine.
In addition, in a brief statement posted on the Facebook social network, Orbán expressed Hungarian support for Ukrainian sovereignty.
“We support the sovereignty of Ukraine, I told the Ukrainian head of state today. Our country is part of the joint efforts of the (European) Union for peace”, reads the brief note.
The Magyar government has warned of the possibility of a significant migratory flow from Ukraine to Hungary in the event of war, which could reach several hundred thousand people. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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