Negotiations between Ukraine and Hungary. "Budapest should be grateful"

Negotiations are ongoing between the Ukrainian National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAZK) and the Hungarian side. According to the press spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Oleh Nikolenko, they concern removed the Hungarian OTP bank from the list of international sponsors of the war. Back in August, Hungary set the condition that it would not budge on the financing of military aid to Ukraine unless it removed the bank from the list.

OTP Bank was included on the list of international war sponsors for continuing its operations in Russia after the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, Nikolenko emphasizes that NAZK is an independent Ukrainian body that is not under the control of the government, parliament, or president.

A spokesman for the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs added that Kyiv is currently in talks with the Hungarian side regarding changes to the language law, which has been criticized by Budapest as restrictive rights of the approximately one hundred thousand Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia.

Spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine: We will not allow the war to reach Hungary.

Kyiv also has information that prisoners of war from Transcarpathia, who were released from Russian captivity in June and taken to Hungary, were subjected to psychological pressure, misled and manipulated by the Hungarian side, he said. Nikolenko.

- They were told that the Ukrainian government had abandoned you and would put you in prison if you returned, he said, adding that the very process of releasing the prisoners, without consultation with Kyiv, was perceived by the Ukrainian government as a stab in the back.

- The Hungarian government should be grateful for what Ukraine is doing. We will not allow the war to reach Hungary and Hungarian cities. The reality is that we are now a shield in Eastern Europe that will stop Russian aggression, Nikolenko noted.

Hungary sets a condition. Military aid for removing the bank from the list of war sponsors

At the end of August, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that Budapest would not budge on the issue of financing arms supplies to Ukraine unless OTP Bank was removed from the list of international war sponsors.

At the end of June, Hungary once again did not support the payment of a tranche from the European Peace Facility in the amount of approximately EUR 500 million to Kyiv, citing the blacklisting of a Hungarian bank by Ukrainians as the reason.

OTP Group is the largest commercial bank in Hungary and one of the leaders in the financial services market in the Central and Eastern European region. It serves several million customers in 11 countries.