Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto admitted on Tuesday to working in support of Russian interests within the European Union, as alleged by a new investigation based on recordings and transcripts of conversations.
"We already knew that foreign intelligence services were intercepting my phone conversations,” he said on Facebook. But today, “the eavesdroppers were able to see that I was saying the same thing in private and in public," he said.
On Tuesday, a consortium of Eastern European media outlets, including The Insider, VSquare, and Delfi, claimed that Szijjarto, a close associate of pro-Russian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, had provided Moscow with "strategic information on crucial issues" via "direct lines".
"Szijjarto’s friendship with [Russia's Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey] Lavrov has never been documented before, with leaked phone calls demonstrating the full extent of their complicity," according to the consortium, which quoted a former European minister as referring to his Hungarian counterpart as an "enthusiastic mole" within the EU.
"I am at your service," Szijjarto reportedly told Lavrov. He allegedly promised to support efforts to remove the sister of Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, from the EU's sanctions list, and sought arguments from Russian interlocutors to justify lifting certain sanctions in Brussels.
"If they help me identify the direct and negative effects for Hungary, I would be very grateful. Because if I can demonstrate something like that, it would open up entirely different possibilities," Szijjarto is said to have stated in these leaked conversations.
However, according to him, these recordings offer no new information, since Hungary very often publicly denounces its opposition to the sanctions, which it considers "bad" for Hungarian interests.
The Washington Post had already revealed about ten days earlier that Peter Szijjarto regularly spoke by phone with Sergey Lavrov during breaks at EU meetings, and according to Politico, Hungary is excluded from sensitive discussions because of this close relationship.
The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, "spoke earlier this week" with Szijjarto, "reiterating the importance of the confidentiality of the closed-door discussions," Anitta Hipper, a spokesperson for the European Commission, responded on Tuesday.
