Hungary's Foreign Minister assumed that it was EU that asked Ukraine to stop transit of Russian oil

Peter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, has once again expressed his dissatisfaction with the absence of reaction of the European Commission to Ukraine’s ban on the transit of the oil produced and shipped by Russian company Lukoil through its territory.

Szijjártó states on Facebook that after over a week of complaints by Hungary and Slovakia "the European Commission has not done a thing", despite the "threat to energy security of two EU member states" and "blatant violation of the Agreement of Association between Ukraine and the EU".

He offered two explanations. The first one is the "weakness" of the European Commission which is allegedly unable to "defend the fundamental interests of its two member states".

The second one is "it is Brussels, not Kyiv, which came up with all this; it is the European Commission, not the Ukrainian government, who wanted to blackmail the two countries which advocate for peace and refuse to transfer weapons".

"The European Commission and its President Ursula von der Leyen personally must immediately tell the truth: whether Brussels asked Kyiv to ban oil supplies? If it didn't, why has the Commission not been taking any measures for over a week?", Szijjártó summed up.

Recently Kyiv ordered a halt of the transit of oil products of the Russian Lukoil company through the Druzhba oil pipeline in Ukraine.

Ukraine insists that the same amount of oil as before is being transferred through the pipeline thanks to other Russian companies. Hungary and Slovakia claim that Kyiv’s decision put their energy security under threat.

Read more – Why Ukraine's decision on Russia's Lukoil is a problem but not a catastrophe