After Russia’s deadly attack on a children’s hospital in Kyiv, Hungary’s upstart opposition leader Péter Magyar will travel to the Ukrainian capital on Wednesday.
“As a father, I cannot do otherwise,” Magyar wrote in a Facebook post. “Yesterday’s horrific Russian missile attack shocked everyone. No child is at war. They can’t do anything about it. They didn’t even have a chance to live.”
The unspoken message: Viktor Orbán alone doesn’t speak for Hungary.
The Hungarian prime minister, who has refused to cut ties with Vladimir Putin despite the Russian leader’s all-out war on Ukraine, has in recent days been on a renegade diplomatic mission, visiting Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing to discuss the conflict while Hungary runs the Council of the EU for six months.
Magyar, a former Fidesz apparatchik and trained lawyer, came out against the Orbán establishment in February. He started a public movement that evolved into the Respect and Freedom Party — which won nearly 30 percent at the European election, the strongest showing by an opposition party in Hungary in 15 years. His seven MEPs have joined the center-right European People’s Party.
The attack on Okhmatdyt, one of the oldest children’s hospitals in Kyiv, killed two people and injured more than 30 according to Ukraine’s interior ministry. Overall, 29 people died in Kyiv in the Russian attacks on Monday, including four children, and 117 were wounded.
Magyar condemned the attack in his social media post, while from Orbán’s government only Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó spoke out, referring to the prime minister’s “peace mission” and the danger of “escalation” but not mentioning Russia or its aggressive role in the conflict.
Magyar had previously been reluctant to speak out on the war in Ukraine, claiming during the election campaign that he agreed with Orbán not to send “troops and weapons” to Ukraine.
An EPP spokesperson told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook in mid-June that they’re cool with Magyar fudging his actual position to avoid facing political consequences back home: “Everything he says in relation to Ukraine and the war, the Orbán propaganda machine uses against him. So it is very clear why he is prudent about that.”
The Hungarian opposition leader is unlikely to meet any top-level officials in Kyiv this week, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his team will be at the NATO summit in Washington D.C.
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