President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine’s rhetoric towards foreign nations, friend or foe, has been increasingly unhinged recently, a recent piece by POLITICO noted.
In the article titled ‘What’s gotten into Volodymyr Zelenskyy?’ the author cites the Ukrainian President’s infamous remarks about Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary earlier this month. As the author points out, PM Orbán was actually never specifically named in those statements, but was simply alluded to as ‘a certain person’ within the European Union who might block the next, €90 billion aid package to Ukraine. Zelenskyy threatened to give the address of this person to his armed forces so they could ‘speak to him in their own language’.
However, this allusion to PM Orbán was so clear that even the EU leadership, certainly no ideological ally to the Hungarian Prime Minister, did not try to equivocate on the subject; and the European Commission issued an official condemnation of the Ukrainian President for ‘threats against an EU Member State’.
POLITICO has talked to Péter Krekó of the Budapest, Hungary-based policy research firm Political Capital Institute. Krekó has told the news site that President Zelenskyy’s threatening statements against PM Orbán were ‘stupid’, as he plainly put it, because they fell right in line with Orbán’s campaign message about Ukraine being an antagonist and threat to Hungary.
The author also notes that there is a sentiment in Brussels that Zelenskyy’s rhetoric is actually helping the Hungarian Prime Minister in his re-election bid. The Hungarian parliamentary election is now just one month away, with the voting taking place on 12 April.
The piece also quotes an unnamed ‘former foreign policy adviser to Zelenskyy,’ who stated that the increasingly harsher rhetoric of the Ukrainian President is fuelled by ‘frustration’.
President Zelenskyy has also spoken ill of the European Union leadership, his staunchest allies in the war against Ukraine. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in February, he spent a big chunk of his speech criticizing the European leaders for not helping Ukraine enough in its war effort, POLITICO points out.
He also made negative statements about US President Donald Trump’s handling of the Eastern European conflict, saying that the US fails to properly acknowledge the aggressor Russia’s culpability in the war.
Meanwhile, more incendiary rhetoric has come out of Ukraine against PM Orbán; although this time, it did not come from the sitting President directly. Former SBU General and Member of the parliament of Ukraine Hryhoriy Omelchenko said in a YouTube interview that the Ukrainian ‘death squad’ namd KARMA knows exactly where Prime Minister Orbán lives, sleeps, ‘drinks his wine’, and whom he meets. PM Orbán’s family was also brought up in those threatening remarks: Omelchenko cautioned that the Hungarian Prime Minister ‘should think about his five children, six grandchildren’.
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