Foreign minister Péter Szijjártó on Wednesday said that the European Union’s proposal on oil sanctions against Russia would destroy the Hungarian economy and does not offer a solution to the huge problems it would create for Hungary. Mr Szijjarto said in a video on his Facebook page that after talks conducted so far, the European Commission does not have a solution, so the only way to an agreement on an oil embargo would be if it applied to maritime oil shipments, and all shipments of Russian oil via pipelines would be fully exempted.
Meanwhile, Russia on 24th February launched its invasion of Ukraine. And, according to the latest updates, Ukrainian forces have retaken villages in the Kharkiv region, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said in his nightly address. The number of civilians killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the war is “thousands higher” than official figures, the head of the UN’s human rights monitoring mission in the country said. At least 100 civilians remained in the Azovstal steelworks under heavy Russian fire in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, an aide to the city’s mayor said.
However, Belarus has said it will deploy special operations troops in three areas near its southern border with Ukraine. The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said Moscow had agreed to help Minsk produce missiles and warned Belarus could “inflict unacceptable damage on the enemy”.