"We will continue to pursue our own course”: why is Hungary obstructing Ukraine's work in NATO

Hungary was offered various conflict resolution options by Ukraine. These options include various consultative mechanisms, negotiators, the postponement of provisions in the education law, and the creation of various commissions to address the concerns of the national minority.

This was revealed by Natalia Halibarenko, the Head of Ukraine's Mission to NATO, in her interview with LIGA.net.

"NATO, in principle, is not a platform for discussing the rights of national minorities. But, unfortunately, the country simply uses the principle of consensus to block our work in the Alliance," Halibarenko commented.

She noted that since 2017, Hungary has blocked all meetings of the Ukraine-NATO commission at the level above ambassadors. Only a year ago, after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, it was possible to convene a Ukraine-NATO commission at the level of foreign ministers thanks to Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the unification of all the members of the Alliance, except for one country.

"Now we have targeted the Ukraine-NATO commission in Vilnius with the participation of the president of Ukraine. Hungary is already expressing its protests and threatening to block this event. Hungary is speculating on our problems," Halibarenko said.

At the same time, according to her, "problems of national minorities" in Ukraine are not only with Hungary, but also, for example, with Poland, Slovakia, and Romania. "But they take it beyond the boundaries of international organizations. And this does not prevent these countries from supporting us, either militarily or non-military," Halibarenko noted.

She cannot predict the actions of the Hungarian authorities: "I will hope until the end that Hungary will understand: it must be on the side of Ukraine in this war. If they do not understand this, we will continue to pursue our own course."

Read also:

• The Air Force spoke about the features of the nighttime massive missile strike

• There is a certain shortage: Ukrainians were told whether there would be power blackouts

• During the night missile strike, the Russians hit an energy infrastructure facility: what is known

• "We will keep pressing": Zelenskyy's team commented on the "Korean" plan for Ukraine

• Missile shelling of Kharkiv region: Russians killed a person, there are wounded