Hungary summons Ukrainian envoy for criticizing Russian gas supply deal

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Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto summoned the Ukrainian ambassador over what he called Ukraine’s attempts to block Hungary’s new long-term gas supply deal with Russia , which was signed on September 27.

Szijjarto said in a statement on his Facebook page on September 28 that it was a “serious violation of Hungarian sovereignty” after Kiev criticized Budapest for signing a new supply agreement in natural gas for 15 years with the Russian energy giant Gazprom. .

The deal was signed by executives of Gazprom and Hungarian energy group MVM at the Foreign Ministry in Budapest on September 27, during a visit by Russian company CEO Aleksei Miller.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, which will lose millions of dollars in transit payments, said Hungary’s supply deal was a “purely political and economically unreasonable decision” that was taken “at the expense of national interests of Ukraine and Ukrainian-Hungarian relations “.

The Ukrainian statement said the deal would “have a significant impact on the energy security of Ukraine and Europe”, and that it would ask the European Commission to assess whether the deal complies with European energy legislation .

Szijjarto wrote in his Facebook post that the Ukrainian government’s decision to attack the deal was “deeply upsetting” and constituted a “hostile measure”.

On September 27, Szijjarto told a press conference that for Hungary energy security is a matter of security, sovereignty and economy rather than a political one. “

“You cannot heat houses with political statements,” Szijjarto added.

A Gazprom statement quoted Miller as saying that Hungary would start receiving gas from Gazprom from October 1 already via TurkStream and South East European pipelines. “

Under the deal, Gazprom would ship 4.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Hungary each year, which would supply around half of Hungary’s annual gas consumption.

There was no immediate comment from the EU executive.

Russia, which shipped natural gas primarily through Ukraine, diversified its export routes, building the Nord Stream pipelines to Germany and the TurkStream link to Turkey.

Hungary has relied on Russia for most of its natural gas imports routed via a pipeline through Ukraine, but in recent years it has diversified its gas imports, opening up cross-border interconnections with most of its neighbors. and secures its supplies from Royal Dutch Shell via liquefied natural gas. gas terminal in Croatia.

Relations between Hungary and its neighbor Ukraine have been strained for years due to a dispute over the language rights of some 150,000 ethnic Hungarians living in the western region of Ukraine in Zakarpattia.

Kiev angered Budapest in 2017 with a law restricting the use of minority languages, including Hungarian, in schools.

In response, the nationalist government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban blocked Ukraine’s efforts to strengthen ties with NATO and the European Union, of which Hungary is a member.

With Reuters report

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