Zelenskiy accuses Viktor Orbán of betraying Europe at leaders’ meeting in UK

breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca to World News@lemmy.world – 285 points – Zelenskiy accuses Viktor Orbán of betraying Europe at leaders’ meeting in UK
theguardian.com

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has taken aim at the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, accusing him of betraying fellow European leaders after Orbán’s recent “peace mission” to Moscow.

The Ukrainian president kicked off the European Political Community summit at Blenheim Palace on Thursday with an emotional speech in which he made veiled but repeated references to Orbán’s recent attempts to get close to Moscow.

. . .

He told the session: “We have maintained unity in Europe by acting together, which means that Putin has missed his primary targets … This is our advantage, but it remains an advantage only as long as we are united.”

Referring to Putin, he said: “He may try to approach you, or go to some of your partners individually, trying to tempt or pressure you to blackmail you so that one of you betrays the rest. We keep our unity.”

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Not to insult people of Hungary but how come this moron is on the world stage . When well at least unbeknowist to me Hungary has not done anything.

Orban, being the contrarian that he is, finds friends in those that seek to undermine european and western unity. Russia, China and Trump fall into that category. Ukraine is forced to host Orban, because he is the biggest roadblock amongst Ukrainian allies for more aid. And Hungary has taken over the presidency of the council of the European Union, which rotates every six months.

As for why Orban is president of Hungary: Corruption and propaganda. Orban controls the big media institutions and has all other press harassed. He has control over the judiciary and a wide net of sympathisers both within and without the government. He is as close to being a dictator as the EU will let him and he keeps testing the waters to strengthen his control further.

A large hungarian voter base is as loyal to him as MAGAites are to Trump.

To be specific, voters that are loyal to him are also those coincidentally that are poor, undereducated, not from Budapest or one of the other major cities and also consume terrestrial television and radio.

In short:

  • In the beginning he won an election with supermajority, since than they changed election rules so it's harder to get them removed (rules favor the single strongest party, so they can be beaten in 1v1 only, but the opposition has several parties)
  • Many young people who had enough left the country, but it got harder to vote if you emigrated
  • They introduced a public work program that local mayors use to threat people to vote for them
  • Orbán realized that leaders in the EU stopped believing him, so he made new friends with Russia, Kazakhstan, etc
  • He uses the only power he has - he can pose as the leader of an EU county legitimizing these autocracies, and
  • vetoing EU decisions un favor of his New friends
  • EU was created with a good faith, a county cannot be kicked out
  • So the only lever they have is closing the money tap that would dry up his guild of thieves - that is happening right now

An organization that can not expel or censure members for bad faith acts is doomed to fail.

Nobody really expected global politics going down the drain as it does, either - just as South Park production stopped because there was no sense in parodizing reality when it's weirder than what they could come up with