Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó in an interview with the commercial television RTL, he responded to the allegations regarding communication with the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov. Szijjártó claims that as the longest-serving foreign minister in the European Union, he is able to connect with his American, Russian, Chinese and Turkish colleagues, and that therefore he often helps colleaguesinforms the correspondent of TASR in Budapest.
“I have been Foreign Minister for eleven and a half years, by far the longest tenure in office in the Union. If journalists and intelligence services knew how many times Foreign Ministers have asked me for help to put them together with someone. Which I think is natural, because I have been in office for eleven and a half years,” answered Szijjártó when asked about the confidentiality of his relationship with Lavrov.
RTL television she recalled the communication between the Hungarian and Russian foreign ministers published by investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi. In it, the head of Hungarian diplomacy in 2020 asked the Russian minister to receive the then Slovak Prime Minister Petr Pellegrini in Moscow. In response, Szijjártó said that he receives many such requests because he knows most of the ministers of foreign affairs in the EU.
Regarding the conversation about Pellegrini, the Hungarian minister said that he received a request from the Slovak side and helped. According to his words, there were several such requests in the past weeks. The Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán instructed the Minister of Justice Bence Tuzson, to investigate the information about the alleged wiretapping of Minister Szijjártó. The prime minister announced this on Facebook on Monday.
“The wiretapping of a member of the government is a serious attack on Hungary. I have ordered the Minister of Justice to immediately investigate the information regarding the wiretapping of Péter Szijjártó.” wrote Orbán after Hungary’s pro-government press suggested that Péter Szijjártó may have been wiretapped.
The Washington Post wrote on Saturday, March 21 that Szijjártó regularly informed the Russians about negotiations in the European Union. However, the article does not mention the possible wiretapping of the head of Hungarian diplomacy.
Szijjártó labeled the Washington Post article as “crazy conspiracy theories”. The telex.hu server adds that the article, among other things, contained the idea that the Russian secret services want to reverse the election campaign in Hungary by organizing an assassination attempt on Orbán.
“The news that Orbán’s people are informing Moscow in detail about the meetings of the Council of the European Union should not surprise anyone. We have suspected this for a long time,” responded Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Szijjártó told him that he should come to Hungary and openly support the opposition.
The head of the extra-parliamentary opposition party TISZA, Péter Magyar, said that “the fact that the Hungarian foreign minister, a good friend of Sergey Lavrov, reports to the Russians almost every minute about every EU meeting, is pure treason”.
According to a recording obtained by the pro-government server mandiner.hu an intelligence operation is underway, in which the investigative journalist Panyi was supposed to provide Szijjártó’s phone number to a foreign secret service of an unspecified EU member country for wiretapping.
