Russia considers the North Atlantic Alliance to be a threat and wants to take control of NATO members, stated the chairman of the Hungarian parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, Zsolt Nemeth.
A close ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban spoke at a conference of the Hungarian Atlantic Society and said that if Hungary were not a NATO member, it might have been forced to defend itself against Russian aggression along with Ukraine.
“No matter what President Putin's propagandists say, NATO is not an anti-Russian organization, it has never planned to attack Russia and it does not plan to do it now,” Nemeth said.
He clarified that the Alliance is capable of defending its members against a Russian attack. He added that Russia sees this defense alliance as a threat, and this is just proof that it wants to control NATO members.
“The goal of Russia is to undermine Hungary's sovereignty. They do not necessarily want to invade us, but rather to dictate what we should and should not do, with whom we should ally, what weapons we should have, what we should represent at international forums. And it is NATO that provides Hungary with protection from such ambitions,” Nemeth said.
Furthermore, Orban's ally criticized the position that the war in Ukraine started because of NATO.
Hungarian officials' position on the war in Ukraine
The Hungarian government does not actively support Ukraine, criticizes the idea of Western countries supplying weapons for the Ukrainian armed forces and calls for a dialogue with Russia.
At the same time, recently Orban stated that Hungary does not want to share a border with Russia again, as it has had negative experiences with that in the past.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said that Hungary and other countries should increase efforts so that people in Ukraine can live in peace.