Viktor Orbán has compared the European Union to Soviet Russia in a scathing speech on the 68th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising against the USSR.
The nationalist leader and Putin ally accused “Brussels bureaucrats” of openly trying to “push the entire European Union into the war in Ukraine”.
“We know that they want to force us into war, we know they want to force their migrants on us, we know they want to hand our children over to gender activists,” he said during the tirade.
Mr Orbán was speaking in Budapest to a large crowd, marking the 1956 uprising against the Russian occupation. The revolt was crushed by Soviet forces, with 3,000 people killed and 20,000 injured.
“For us, the lesson of 1956 is that we must fight for only one thing: for Hungary and for Hungarian freedom,” he told thousands of people at a rally in Budapest”, he told the audience.
“Do we bow to the will of a foreign power, this time from Brussels, or do we resist it? I propose that our response should be as clear and unequivocal as it was in 1956.
“The Brussels bureaucrats have led the West into a hopeless war,” said the Hungarian leader. “In their minds, dizzy with the hope of victory, this is the war of the West against Russia. Now they want to openly push the entire European Union into the war in Ukraine.”
He was speaking as Hungary holds the rotating presidency of the EU, giving Mr Orbán a greater platform to sound off against Brussels.
Hungary’s PM also made the claim that the EU was plotting to station Ukrainian troops within his country’s borders in the event of victory over Russia.
“We Hungarians would wake up one morning to find that Slavic soldiers from the east were again stationed on the territory of Hungary,” he claimed.
Later in the speech, he said: “Independent Hungarian politics are unacceptable to Brussels. That is why they announced that they will get rid of Hungary’s national government. They also announced that they wanted to hang a Brussels puppet government around the country’s neck.”
