- The Chairman of the Czech Chamber of Deputies, Tomio Okamura, strongly condemned the statements of Volodymyr Zelensky.
- Okamura asks the European Union to clearly distance itself from Zelensky’s behavior.
- Prime Minister Andrej Babiš described Zelensky’s statements towards Orbán as very non-standard.
The Chairman of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament, Tomio Okamura, condemned the words of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who last week in allusions to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his blocking of the European Union’s loan to Ukraine due to stopped oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline threatened to use soldiers. On Monday, Okamura called on the EU to distance itself from Zelensky’s behavior, reports TASR correspondent in Prague.
“It is necessary to clearly publicly reject Ukrainian President Zelensky’s threat of de facto physical violence against Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán,” Okamura said, calling on the EU to distance itself from Zelensky’s behavior. “After all, we cannot support a person who threatens to physically kill the prime minister of a member country of the European Union, let alone the prime minister of Hungary. That is absolutely out of the question,” declared the Speaker of the Chamber.
He added that he speaks for himself, but he assumes that his coalition colleagues will also comment on it. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš subsequently, after the government meeting, he answered questions from journalists that it was not the topic of the coalition council. “Mr. Zelensky’s statement towards Viktor Orbán was very non-standard when he said that the Ukrainian soldiers would find him, or whatever it was. It was also condemned by the head of the Hungarian opposition, Magyar, and if I have good information, the EC also commented critically on it. But we didn’t solve it in a different way at the coalition council,” he added.
Last week on Thursday, Zelenskyy expressed hope that Orbán would stop blocking financial support, otherwise he would “give the Ukrainian army the address of the (Hungarian) prime minister to talk to him.” The European Commission said on Friday that it considers Zelensky’s statements unacceptable.
