Armenian Foreign Minister Mirzoyan is leaving for Hungary today, where he will hold talks with his Hungarian counterpart. Mirzoyan’s visit takes place against the background of the information that Hungary is blocking the process of providing defense funds of about ten million dollars to Armenia from the European Union Peace Fund. We are talking about the “non-lethal” measures announced by the EU Ambassador to Armenia.
Hungary blocks that decision, according to the media, on the condition that assistance from this fund is also provided to Azerbaijan, so to speak, to keep the balance. Is Hungary blocking at the request of Azerbaijan, given the close ties? Armenia decided to freeze diplomatic relations with Hungary in September 2012, after the famous decision to extradite Ramil Safarov, the criminal who killed Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan during NATO exercises in Budapest, sentenced to life without extradition.
After that deal between Hungary and Azerbaijan, Safarov returned to Baku and was released as a hero. Armenia started talking about restoring relations with Hungary after the 44-day war in 2021. In December 2021, it was announced that 5 Armenian prisoners are returning from Baku to Yerevan through the mediation of Hungary. One year later, in December 2022, Yerevan and Budapest announced the decision to restore diplomatic relations. On October 27, 2023, Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijarto arrived in Armenia.
Against the background of this growing improvement in Armenian-Hungarian relations, it is puzzling that Budapest blocks the European aid to be allocated to Armenia, and that is in a case where it is not about weapons, but various “non-lethal” means of defense, which of course are not a threat to Azerbaijan in any way. Is this a gap in Armenian diplomacy that Ararat Mirzoyan sets out to correct, or is it a matter of Brussels-Budapest relations, which today, to put it mildly, is not very smooth? But, in that case, what does Budapest want to achieve by blocking assistance to Armenia, if it is not just a request from Baku, although Azerbaijan does not seem to have applied for assistance from the same European fund.
