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Regarding EU plans, Mr Orbán said, for instance, the German leader of the European People’s Party talks about the reinstatement of conscription as if that should be done under the auspices of a united EU army, but that would mean that “disposal of the fate of our own young people would be removed from national competence,” and the country would lose a facet of its sovereignty.
He underlined that in Hungary the re-introduction of conscription was not on the agenda. We do have on the agenda, however, plenty of military studies, training and the introduction of defence studies to the curriculum of secondary schools. “We are doing a number of things that are designed to make the whole country, the entire Hungarian society capable of self-defence without conscription,” he said.
He recalled that thirty years ago conscription had been phased out because we had restored peace in Europe, the Cold War had come to an end, we had managed to push the Russians, the Soviet Union out of Central Europe, and NATO had effectively no rival in terms of military strength in the world.
This is why there was no need for permanent preparedness, for the continued military education of young generations in the form of compulsory military service; countries can also be defended with professional armies, he explained.
Regarding professional soldiers, the Prime Minister said, “they are the best of society,” they are the most committed and most prestigious members of society who take the most serious possible oath to the effect that they are prepared to lead a different life compared with the rest of society – leading a cushy life – in the interest of being in permanent preparedness for the defence of the country.
He added that this required a way of life that involved a very serious physical exercise regime, close acquaintance with weapons, camaraderie, integrity, humility, and the ability to sacrifice one’s life for one’s country.
According to Mr Orbán, now that there is a war in Europe again, there is a very big question mark behind this concept.
He said humility, discipline, self-defence, the capacity for self-sacrifice, camaraderie, team work are all values which must also emerge beyond the realm of professional soldiers, but for this we do not necessarily have to reinstate conscription.
There are reservist training programmes, we have military secondary schools, we have summer programmes where we can take people, young people closer to the bearing of arms, self-defence, integrity and patriotism also without compulsory military service, he pointed out.
Mr Orbán said therefore Hungary does not believe that the reinstatement of conscription would be the only way to respond to the current war.
He took the view that every week we find ourselves moving closer to the war; every week something happens that points in the direction of Europe drifting towards entering into the war. He mentioned as an example that there are ongoing negotiations about French training officers going to Ukraine. He said it is an even more alarming development that ever more people, including the NATO Secretary General, now say that the Ukrainians should be allowed to use the weapons provided for them by western countries not only for self-defence, but also for attacking the Russians.
In his view, a major debate will unfold about the extent to which these weapons can be regarded as Ukrainian, and the Russians have already announced that they will regard this as “NATO having a hand” in any damage caused by the Ukrainians with such weapons in the territory of Russia. Ukraine would not be able to hit Russian territories without NATO; now it has that capability, meaning that we have taken yet another step towards becoming involved, he pointed out in summary.
He recalled that the Russians had previously announced: they will continue to push forward in Ukraine until a territory comes into being which will make it impossible for the Ukrainians to cause damage to old Russian territories, meaning not the occupied ones.
“So, there is a risk, we must clearly see that by supporting Ukraine in also shooting at the territory of Russia, we bring the Russians closer to us, we allow them to move closer to us,” he said.
He stressed that drifting into a war was not an overnight event, it had three stages: speech, preparations and finally, destruction.
We are already past the speech phase; what we are now analysing concerns the stage of preparations, and this means that “we’re only centimetres away” from actual devastation and destruction, he said.
Mr Orbán took the view that Western European countries want to win the war, want to defeat Russia, and their sense of danger is kept at a low level by physical distance. He added that the larger states of Europe were far from Russia. Their thinking is that between them and the Russians there is Ukraine as a buffer zone and also Central Europe. “Wasn’t it the same in past times? This is what they used us for,” he observed.
He said that at every single EU summit, there is every more pressure on him, and he believes that this is not over yet. We must resist, he stated. He added that the question was “whether there is a country behind us,” whether Hungary is united on the issue of peace, “whether we stand up for peace,” and “whether we have the courage to say that we are not prepared to die for Ukraine.”
A compelling argument for peace is, he stressed, that NATO is a defence alliance which was established and which Hungary joined in order to guarantee the defence of the Member States, rather than to intervene in an armed conflict outside the territory of NATO, thereby creating the threat of a world war.
He said it is absurd that NATO – instead of protecting its Member States – seeks to drag them into a cataclysm. It is as if, he added, a firefighter decided to use a flamethrower in order to put out a fire.
Regarding Saturday’s peace march, Mr Orbán said the most important mission of the march is to make it clear that now we are truly balancing between war and peace.
He highlighted that what was the most important was to state that while many claimed – especially in Western Europe and on the Left here which was in their pay – that there was no direct threat of war, in actual fact, “there is.”
And those are best suited to talk about the threat of war who feel most at threat, meaning the people, he added.
The second thing we must make clear is that there is a strong desire for peace in the Hungarian people, and “we don’t believe that Europe could endure another war,” he said.
He also pointed out that a week before the European Parliament elections, the peace march could remind us that the founding fathers of the European Union had been right at the end of the day. Their underlying assumption was that Europe could not endure another war. So, the European Union is a peace project, it was created against war, and compared with this, now “the European Union itself is taking the lead and is guiding us into the war.”
We must further make it clear, he continued, that we did not join the European Union in order to later engage in a war collectively, to pour 100 billion euros into a war as war is a monster that must be constantly fed, and in the Prime Minister’s opinion, the US Democratic Party administration and the leaders of the European Union are equally ready to feed the war.
We must ask European leaders the question: if we spend all our money on Ukraine, how will we restart the European economy?
The European Parliament elections are about making it clear to European leaders that there is democracy and the voice of an ever larger pro-peace Europe cannot be ignored, he concluded, adding that it is not only about the voice of the Hungarian people, there are a few other countries that have switched to the side of peace.
We must induce leaders to make pro-peace decisions, “pro-war politicians must be sent packing;” in a democracy, elections are the means to achieve this, he stressed. Today in Hungary, only Fidesz and the Christian Democratic People’s Party stand for peace, he stated, stressing that those who want to win the war in Ukraine on the battlefield “condemn themselves to war and risk a world war.”
We should take the initiative back, we should have a ceasefire and start negotiations before we find ourselves in the middle of a large European war, the Prime Minister said, appealing to everyone.
He also stressed that looking back into history we saw that in the first stage of every war, there was anger directed at the pro-peace forces who were placed under significant moral pressure.
He added that the advocates of war who kept on claiming that there was no other morally acceptable solution to the situation than war also said that those who were on the side of peace stood for a morally incorrect position.
As time went by and it transpired that war was not the solution to the conflicts that had emerged among European nations, so the position of pro-war advocates shifted towards the position of the pro-peace forces, Mr Orbán said, adding that “we should save” those years which were previously spent in the devastation of world wars.
The Prime Minister took the view that in hindsight we may well look back upon 2024 as we now look back upon 1914 or 1939; as a year “when the great trouble started, when the preparations led to a continental conflict that resulted in pan-European involvement.”
This could be avoided. It is not true at all that every war is written in the stars. Every war is a consequence of the decisions of leaders, and if the leaders keep their wits about them, there will be no war, Mr Orbán stressed.
