Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said that Lithuania requested the exclusion of a Hungarian delegation from a NATO meeting as early as 2019, amid fears that it may have passed classified information to Moscow.
"Orbán's foreign minister confirmed that he systematically informed Moscow about what EU leaders were saying behind closed doors. What a disgrace," Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on the social media platform X.
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At the same time, Tusk indicated that the reports and admissions did not come as a surprise to him. He had already warned on 22 March, even before the leaks were confirmed, that Orbán's people could be informing Moscow about the details of European Union Council meetings.
"The news that Orbán's people are informing Moscow about the details of EU Council meetings should not surprise anyone. We have had this suspicion for a long time. This is one of the reasons why I only speak when it is absolutely necessary." - wrote the head of the Polish government before Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó confirmed that he was in regular contact with Russian Foreign Ministry chief Sergey Lavrov during secret EU meetings.
Ahead of the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Tusk revealed that Lithuania had already requested the exclusion of the Hungarian delegation from the NATO meeting in 2019, fearing that it may have passed classified information to Moscow. Objections about Hungary were coming, the Prime Minister stressed, from many sources and for a long time.
"Already in 2019, I think, if I remember correctly, Lithuania, for example, asked for the exclusion of the Hungarian delegation at the NATO meeting, saying that there were suspicions that the Hungarian delegation would pass information with the highest status of discretion to Moscow," - Donald Tusk said ahead of Tuesday's cabinet meeting in an interview with journalists.
The immediate cause for discussion of the leaks is a weekend report by the 'Washington Post', according to which Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó allegedly passed information to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov during breaks in EU meetings.
Szijjártó initially dismissed the reports, calling them 'fake news', but later admitted that he consulted with non-EU countries - including Russia, the US, Turkey and Israel - before or after ministerial meetings, considering it 'perfectly natural'.
Former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, on the other hand, confirmed with the national broadcaster on Monday that in preparing for the 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius, care was taken not to include Hungarian representatives in talks on sensitive issues.
"In preparing for the 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius, we tried not to include Hungarian representatives in the meetings, especially where sensitive issues were discussed," he explained.
However, Vytautas Leskevicius, Lithuanian ambassador to NATO from 2015 to 2020, said in an interview with Reuters that he did not recall that Hungary's exclusion was requested, as Tusk claims.
Moscow has not commented on the matter. Instead, according to Reuters, Prime Minister Orbán has ordered an investigation, claiming that his foreign minister was wiretapped.