Ukraine’s foreign minister has urged an investigation after leaked audio appeared to capture his Hungarian counterpart telling Moscow he would try to amend EU sanctions to its liking. Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Sybiga said: “these are not conversations. This is obsequious reporting to Russian patrons. Disgusting, it is a disgrace, and it really should be subject to investigation.” On Tuesday – days before an election in which Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is facing the toughest battle of his 16 years in power – a joint media investigation published a report that it said was based on leaked phone calls between Péter Szijjártó and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. In one, Szijjártó is alleged to have told Lavrov: “I am always at your disposal.” In another, he appears to offer help with other EU sanctions that have affected Russia. Szijjártó did not deny that the calls with Lavrov had taken place. Instead, he said his conversations had been intercepted. “It is a huge scandal … that foreign secret services were continuously wiretapping my phone calls and that these foreign secret services have now made these phone calls public one-and-a-half weeks before the Hungarian parliamentary election,” he said in a video posted to social media. The report prompted strong criticism from several EU figures, including the prime ministers of Poland and Ireland. In the EU, Orbán has remained close to Vladimir Putin after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has repeatedly blocked efforts by Brussels to present a united front in support of Ukraine, leading some critics to refer to him as Putin’s Trojan horse in the EU.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has criticised Hungary for “pleasing” Moscow as Budapest’s veto over the EU’s lifeline package delays the war-torn country’s recovery and preparation for the next winter. Hungary, the most Kremlin-friendly country in the EU, blocked the €90bn ($100bn) loan at an EU summit earlier this month, putting immense strain on Ukraine’s finances. The lack of cash is already hindering Ukraine’s preparations for the winter to come, as the works were supposed to start in March. “Because the €90bn support package is still blocked, we cannot use the €5bn planned for protection and recovery to get ready, no matter what this winter will be like,” said Zelenskyy at a press conference with EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas. “This is happening because one person in Europe is standing against all of Europe simply to please Moscow,” he added, in an apparent reference to Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán.
Zelenskyy has said he would ask US mediators to pass Kyiv’s offer of an Easter ceasefire on energy strikes to Russia, after the Kremlin said it lacked any detailed proposals. Zelenskyy said he would meet online on Wednesday with US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner as well as Nato secretary general Mark Rutte to discuss the status of US-brokered peace negotiations with Russia. The US, Russia and Ukraine have held three rounds of high-level, trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva this year in a bid to negotiate an end to Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the second world war. A fourth round of talks due this month was postponed due to the Iran conflict, amid an ongoing deadlock over the question of territory in eastern Ukraine.
The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, and several EU foreign ministers visited the small town of Bucha on Tuesday, four years after the massacre there. They voiced their support for Ukraine’s demand for accountability over Russian atrocities committed there. “This morning in Bucha we were reminded of what is at stake,” Kallas said in Kyiv after the trip. “There is no starker example of Russia’s brutality than what happened there.” Ukrainian officials say Russian forces killed several hundred people in Bucha shortly after the start of the invasion in 2022.
A Russian military plane has crashed in the Crimean peninsula, killing 29 people, the Tass news agency reported, quoting Russia’s defence ministry. Contact was lost with the Antonov-26 on Tuesday at 6pm Moscow time during a scheduled flight, the ministry told the agency. “The search and rescue team has located the crash site of the An-26 aircraft. According to reports from the scene, the six crew members and 23 passengers on board were killed,” the ministry said. RIA news agency said according to an initial assessment, technical problems were believed to have caused the crash.
Zelenskyy has said Russia will soon be using “paper mail, telegraphs and horses” following fresh reports that it is in the midst of a vast, slow-moving effort to splinter its internet from the rest of the world. The Ukrainian president called the move “a step 100 years back”, which experts have said will have steep consequences for millions of people who are gradually being cut off. Unlike Iran’s internet shutdowns earlier this year, Russia’s shutdown is a piecemeal and opaque effort. It is defined by escalating mobile internet blackouts across cities and provinces, growing restrictions on certain kinds of traffic, and new blocks on Telegram, a messaging app essential to communication and daily life for most Russians. Analysts at Amnezia VPN said censors were “blocking more crudely and on a much larger scale, no longer worried that something might break or spiral out of control”.