As prospects for the Ukrainian military worsen, European leaders—so Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán claims—have become open to the deployment of ‘peacekeeping’ forces in Ukraine.
During a Friday, March 31st interview on Hungarian radio station Kossuth Rádió, Orbán remarked that it is “close to a legitimate, accepted, well-established question in the conversation between European leaders as to whether or not the member states of the European Union can send peacekeeping troops in some form or not.”
“We are close to this border that was previously thought to be impassable,” the Hungarian leader added. Since “the West is providing Ukrainians with more and more modern equipment, I am convinced that the threat of world war is not a literary exaggeration.”
He continued, saying that “when European and American leaders say that if this continues, we may end up in the Third World War, this seems like an incredibly exaggerated sentence at first. But where I work and where I see the events, this is a real danger at this moment.”
Orbán’s painting of a scenario in which NATO troops are deployed in Ukraine is a highly provocative one in Moscow, which deems such a move a red line.
In response to Orbán’s adumbration of ‘peacekeepers’ in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov remarked that “if we are talking about some serious ‘verbalizations,’ then this, of course, is an extremely dangerous discussion.”
On his Telegram channel, former Russian president and deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dimitri Medvedev issued the starkest of warnings.
It is obvious that such ‘peacekeepers’ are our unvarnished enemies, wolves in sheep’s clothing … [their] true intentions are crystal clear—to impose a peace that is favorable to them on the line of contact from a position of strength and to station their ‘peacekeeping’ troops in Ukraine, who would be armed with assault rifles and riding on tanks, and would be wearing some sort of blue helmets with yellow stars.”
“It is clear that the so-called NATO peacekeepers,” he went on, are “simply preparing to enter the conflict on the side of our enemies in order to make hay out of this, bringing the situation to the point of no return, and to unleash that World War III they claim to be so afraid of.”
Having become a “legitimate target,” those ‘peacekeepers,’ Medvedev continued, must then be destroyed mercilessly as they are the “soldiers of the enemy,” predicting they “will die in the course of combat.”
“Is Europe prepared for a long line of coffins holding its ‘peacekeepers’?” he asked rhetorically.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Budapest has repeatedly voiced its concern that the increasing Western military support to Ukraine—in lieu of peace negotiations—could trigger an open war between NATO and Russia—which it, as a NATO member, would be subsequently dragged into.
Although amicable relations and strong economic ties have long existed between Hungary and Russia, earlier in March, the Kremlin included Hungary in a group of foreign states that it said had committed “unfriendly actions against Russia, its companies and citizens.”
Russia’s envoy to Budapest, Yevgeny Stanislavov, then explained in an interview with Russian news agency RIA Novosti that since Hungary had signed “all the anti-Russian sanctions packages of Brussels” and is therefore “forced to strictly comply with them,” Moscow saw no other way but to degrade their relationship status, while keeping channels for dialogue open.
Although it has condemned the Russian invasion, thus far, Budapest has refused to supply Kyiv with weapons.
