Hungarian minister meets Russia's Sergei Lavrov despite EU 'understanding' not to do so
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó met with Russia's Sergei Lavrov on Thursday hours after an EU official said member states had an understanding not to meet with Russian officials as it "doesn't make much sense".
Szijjártó justified his meeting with his Russian counterpart in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations' General Assembly by writing in a Facebook post that "peace requires negotiation, negotiation requires dialogue!"
In an accompanying video, he said he asked Lavrov whether he had met with other EU foreign ministers while in New York and had been told it wasn't the case.
"Of course, it may be that at home, opposition MPs, spokesmen, or members of the opposition press will criticise my meeting with Sergei Lavrov, but the fact is that if peace is not achieved without dialogue, it will not be achieved," he went on.
"And I think that out of anywhere, it is here at the UN General Assembly, that this dialogue should have been started. And I think that if there are no talks on peace in the coming period, the world will face even more serious consequences, which it would be good to prevent," he added.
Their meeting came just hours after EU Commission spokesperson Peter Stano told reporters that "it doesn’t make much sense to communicate with the Russian leadership right now because Putin yesterday confirmed very clearly for the whole world, exactly on World Day of Peace, that he’s interested not in peace but in a continuation of his aggression in violation of the UN Charter."
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday morning declared a partial military mobilisation in a televised address to the nation that could see up to 300,000 men drafted to join the war. He also confirmed that referenda would
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