NATO’s plans to get more involved in the war in Ukraine are like a firefighter trying to put out a fire with a flamethrower, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said yesterday.
Orban has been at odds with Western nations over support for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion more than two years ago.
NATO was “getting closer to war” every week, Orban said as alliance foreign ministers were meeting in Prague to discuss military aid to Ukraine.
Photo: Reuters
Orban also said that negotiations about sending French military trainers to Ukraine and to allow the Ukraine military to use Western weapons to attack Russian targets were ideas that were “worrying” and took NATO closer to war.
A NATO mission to Ukraine would risk world war instead of protecting the member states of the alliance, he said.
“It is absurd that NATO, instead of defending us, is dragging us, a member state, into a world war,” he said on Hungarian state radio. “This is as absurd as a firefighter deciding to come and put out a fire with a flamethrower.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday said that the “time has come” for members of the military alliance to reconsider some of the restrictions attached to the use of weapons they supplied to Ukraine.
While Ukrainian leaders urged governments to ease the restrictions, Western countries appeared increasingly divided in recent weeks on whether Ukraine should be allowed to strike targets on Russian soil.
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