Gábor Horváth: The support of partners, primarily military, of both Ukraine and Israel, must be timely

Gábor Horváth

How can the escalation in the Middle East and the crisis in the US Republican Party affect the situation in Europe, particularly in its central-eastern part? Gábor Horváth, who is deputy editor-in-chief of the Hungarian newspaper Népszava, shared his thoughts with Newssky. 

The Middle East in Hungarian is called «Near East» — and it’s indeed close to Central and Eastern Europe in both geographical and historic senses of the word. Enough to mention that there are about 200-250 thousand Israelis of Hungarian and many more of Ukrainian origin. So at the level of simple family and human ties, we’re strongly connected. Also, the economic relations are relevant and especially in the case of Ukraine the military aspect is (or potentially might become) important. A long and widespread crisis in the Middle East would be detrimental to both Hungary and Ukraine — but perhaps not so much in the short term. Financial aid to Ukraine doesn’t seem to be in danger now, though there might be some problems if Israel’s war lasts longer than a few weeks.

The crisis in the Republican Party on the other hand can have an immediate, though likely only short-term negative effect on the level of military support to Ukraine. At this stage of the war against the Russian aggressor, it is vital to maintain the continuous delivery of the supplies necessary for the ZSU, especially those of artillery and air defense munitions. President Biden and the Democrats in Congress have already moved to connect the undeniable military aid to Israel to that to Ukraine. It’s a seemingly smart tactical step making it difficult for those in the Republican Party opposing the aid to Ukraine to block the new procurement procedure.

Meanwhile the current Hungarian government allies itself with the right wing of the Republican Party and seems to be interested in the chaos it creates in the hope that it would stop or at least limit the criticism coming from the State Department. In terms of European politics, it is telling that both the Hungarian Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister flew this week to Beijing for the 10-year anniversary celebration of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative as if nothing happened in Israel and the European Union didn’t call an extraordinary Summit meeting. On Tuesday Orbán got his reward: he had a one-on-one meeting with Putin. This is while Russia supports Hamas and Orbán is “all for Israel”. The picture couldn’t be clearer.

Maryna Kovalchuk, Newssky’s own correspondent (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland), head of the V5 Media project, and deputy editor-in-chief, contributed.

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