Does the Russian invasion of Ukraine crack the ultra-conservative alliance between Poland and Hungary?
The war created a rift between Russophobic Poland and pro-Russian Hungary. The deepening of El Pais
Warsaw, which leads the West in taking a tough stance towards Moscow, is distancing itself from Budapest over the vague response of Viktor Orbán, who will seek to confirm his mandate on Sunday.
On March 15, Prime Ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, Mateusz Morawiecki, Petr Fiala and Janez Jansa, along with the leader of the ultra-conservative Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, traveled to Kiev by train in the means of escalating the war to show their solidarity with Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. Meanwhile, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in Budapest, at the central event of his election campaign, that his country must stay out of the war to protect its interests and without once mentioning its former ally, the Russian president. Vladimir Putin.
The image – we read in El Pais – reflects the rift that the Russian invasion of Ukraine opened in the Polish-Hungarian axis, after years in which he had been alongside Brussels in a battle over the rule of law and independence. of justice. United by their authoritarian and illiberal drift and by a nationalist discourse in defense of traditional values, the two countries have dossiers open on the basis of Article 7 of the EU Treaty, which allows the suspension of the right to vote for a country that violates fundamental values of the Union.
"Poland? The best country in Europe, ”Orbán said at the EU summit last October on the possibility of his partner being sanctioned over the controversial decision of his Constitutional Court, which put the country on the verge of a legal break with the EU. . Half a year later, as Warsaw takes a hard line against Moscow and improves its international status for its role in hosting Ukrainian refugees, Budapest was left alone in the EU due to its vague stance on the war in Ukraine.
The most visible sign of the divorce (or temporary separation) was the decision by Poland and the Czech Republic to cancel their participation in a meeting of defense ministers in Budapest of the Visegrad Group, also known as the V4 forum in which the three countries and Slovakia cooperate within the framework of the European Union. Polish defense minister Mariusz Błaszczak refused to participate due to "Orbán's pro-Putin attitude", according to a Polish government source quoted by the daily Rzeczpospolita. The first to announce her absence, Czech Minister of State Jana Cernochova, was tougher on Twitter: “I have always supported V4 and I am very sorry that cheap Russian oil is more important to Hungarian politicians than Ukrainian blood. ". The meeting, which until its cancellation was scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, was to address Budapest's position on the Russian invasion.
Hungary also selected the Polish ultra-conservative organization Ordo Iuris to lead an observer mission for Sunday's elections, the hardest fought since Orbán came to power for the second time in 2010. Zoltan Kovács, Secretary of State Polish for International Communication and Relations, tweeted on Sunday that the reason was "the growing concern for the impartiality" of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which will also observe elections on Sunday. Poland and its foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, currently hold the chairmanship of the OSCE.
The removal of Poland, the sixth European economy, may weaken Budapest's position in Brussels, but Kovács is not afraid of isolation: "The Hungarian national position can never be isolated, because we do not act according to the expectations of others, but according to those of Hungarian citizens. " The gamble appears to be working: Orbán was unaffected by his ties to Moscow, and goes into Sunday's elections with a slight lead on the united opposition list, a gap similar to what polls have shown over the past year and a half.
Red line
Orbán condemned the Russian aggression and joined the first series of European sanctions, but drew a red line against Russian oil and gas imports due to Hungary's strong energy dependence (65% of Hungarian oil and the 85% of its gas comes from Russia). The ultra-conservative government of Budapest has also approved the strengthening of NATO's military presence in the west of the country, but has refused to send weapons to Ukraine or for shipments from other countries to cross its territory. Everything, says the leader of Fidesz, to preserve peace and security and keep energy prices under control.
In contrast to Orbán's position, Poland not only sends arms to Ukraine, but also serves as a platform for the transport of equipment sent from other states. He is also addicted to Russian energy, but is willing to seek alternatives to sever these ties. He wants to stop importing coal from Russia as early as next May and oil by the end of the year, Prime Minister Morawiecki announced Wednesday. And while the Hungarian government goes ahead and says, even though no one has asked it, it will not send soldiers, the Polish government proposes to send a NATO peacekeeping mission to Ukraine, to which both Hungary and Poland are close.
“If you ask me if I'm happy, I'll tell you no, but I'll wait for the elections. We'll see later, ”the Polish leader of PiS Kaczynski told the Polish public radio question about Orbán's position on the war in Ukraine. The country's president, Andrzej Duda, said on television Saturday that he found Budapest's position on the "death of thousands of people" "difficult to understand", although he said the Hungarian prime minister is in a "difficult situation". because it is "almost totally dependent on Russia". Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz bluntly described Hungary's position as "wrong", led by an electoral "short-termism".
"With all due respect, we accept the opinion of others, but on issues such as energy, weapons and soldiers, we cannot compromise, because it would be against the national interest of Hungary," he replied to this newspaper on Monday. Kovács regarding the statements of Kaczynski and Duda. "We understand the Polish position and they should understand the Hungarian position", added the international spokesman of the Orbán government, who stressed that the position of the states on the war in Ukraine "is not a question of emotions, but of national interests and perspective. national". “There are a lot of emotions out there and very strong words, but decisions have to be made with a cool head,” he said, and expressed confidence in the strength of a relationship between the two countries that has centuries of common history. "It is clear that, even before, we do not always agree on everything, and this is not a problem," he concluded.
The point is that the disagreements and the different historical experiences that existed in Warsaw and Budapest about Russia took on a completely different dimension with the war in Ukraine. "There has always been a different approach, but it didn't really matter," said Aleks Szczerbiak, a political science professor at the University of Sussex and a specialist in contemporary Polish politics, by phone. “Now the war has overshadowed everything else. In the short term, everything is seen through this prism. In the long run, when the fighting is over, I see that this alliance is very likely to re-emerge, because the sources of disagreement with the liberal mainstream in the EU have not disappeared. They just stopped being the priority, ”he adds.
A few months ago it would have been unthinkable that the President of the United States Joe Biden would have chosen the royal castle in Warsaw to give a speech as important as last Saturday. Biden had previously criticized the ultra-nationalist Polish government, which was betting on Donald Trump's re-election in 2020 and took weeks to recognize the Democratic candidate's victory.
The question now is whether Warsaw will return to its old ways when the guns go silent or whether it will choose to use the political capital it has gained in this crisis to loosen its grip on Hungary and improve its relations with the rest of the EU. In Szczerbiak's words, it remains to be seen whether the war will "reform [the alliances] or just reorganize them temporarily."
István Kiss, director of the Danube Institute, a Hungarian government-funded think tank, rejects the notion that the historical relationship between Poland and Hungary may be at a breaking point and believes that the comments of Warsaw leaders "are primarily aimed at to the Polish population ".
(Extract from the press review of eprcomunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/polonia-ungheria-russia/ on Sat, 02 Apr 2022 06:09:14 +0000.