If Russia rolled its tanks into Hungary as it did in 1956, Budapest would have thought twice about defending itself from the invasion, unlike Kyiv, according to the Hungarian premier’s political advisor, Balázs Orbán.
Orbán — who is not related to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — explained on a podcast on Wednesday that Hungary had learned its lesson and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s decision to stand up to Moscow in early 2022 was “irresponsible”.
“He put his country on the defensive in a war, so many people died, so much territory was lost,” Orbán explained to the conservative outlet Mardiner.
“I repeat, it’s their right, it’s their sovereign decision, they could have done it, but if we had been asked, we would not have advised it because in ’56 what happened happened.”
“Because we have learned that we must be careful here, and we must be careful with very precious Hungarian lives. You cannot just throw them away in front of others.”
Viktor Orbán’s political director also said that he believed any provocation was counterproductive, adding that 80-90% of the Hungarian people agree with the Hungarian government’s policy on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
‘Outrageous sentences’
Balázs Orbán’s words sparked a series of reactions at home, leading opposition politicians to slam him over his reading of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, meant to liberate the country from the Soviet Union, which in turn crushed the resistance with tanks and rifles.
Péter Magyar, chairman of the opposition Tisza party, said that such a person should not hold public office alongside the Hungarian prime minister and should resign before the national day commemorating the uprising, 23 October.
“Quite outrageous sentences, with which the brightest 13 days of the 20th-century Hungarian history were sacrificed on the altar of vile daily propaganda communication,” Magyar said in a post on Facebook.
“With these sentences, Balázs Orbán has humiliated the memory of thousands of Hungarian freedom fighters, hundreds of whom — unlike Balázs Orbán — were willing to sacrifice their lives for the freedom and independence of their country,” wrote Péter Magyar.
MP Ferenc Gyurcsány, former prime minister of Hungary and leader of the centre-left Democratic Coalition party, said that the statement by the Hungarian prime minister’s closest associate means that the Orbán government would hand Hungary over to the Russians without resistance.
MP and the co-chairman of Hungary’s Green Party, Péter Ungár, said that someone who considers himself a representative of the nation cannot claim that Hungary would not defend itself against Russian military aggression.
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Balázs Orbán fired back in a statement on Facebook, rejecting the allegations that his words were offensive to the memory of those killed in 1956, calling the reactions “outrageous”.
“There is no stopping the train of the war propaganda press,” Orbán said.
“The war should never have started and should have been brought to a diplomatic end as soon as possible. Everyone would have been much better off.”
In 1956, Soviet troops intervened in the central European country, then firmly behind the Iron Curtain, killing around 6,000 Hungarians — half of which were civilians — and forcing tens of thousands into exile in nearly two weeks of fighting after revolutionaries deposed the Communist Party government in Budapest for acting as a puppet of the Kremlin.
