Orbán provokes Croatia
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is blocking the EU's oil embargo against Russia. After defying Brussels over the ban he has now ruffled feathers in Zagreb, too. "If they hadn't taken the sea from us we would have a port," he said last week, alluding to the Dalmatian coast in Croatia, which once belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary. He argued that Hungary would need its own port to be able to import non-Russian oil. Commentators are outraged.
Intolerable border transgression
wPolityce is losing its patience:
“This isn't the first time Orbán has said something like this. Two years ago we reported how the Hungarian head of government published a picture of a globe with a map of the former Kingdom of Hungary, whose borders included Croatia. At the time the incident went relatively unnoticed, but today, with war raging in Europe, the situation is different. Now no country is prepared to stand by silently when someone transgresses its borders, even if only symbolically.”
Foolish statements play into Putin's hands
Orbán's provocations are preposterous, Index.hr writes:
“While the invasion of Ukraine continues, while we have open aggression in Europe with tanks and planes, [Orbán's] statement, aimed directly at Croatia, only re-awakens centuries-old tensions. ... At best, it's the statement of a political populist and political nincompoop; at worst, that of Putin's lapdog, a Russian ally who wants to destroy Europe's united condemnation of Russian aggression.”