Magyar and Orbán engage in public dispute with Sybiha over the Carpathian Eight

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar has compared the Carpathian Eight format created by Ukraine to village football and declared that signing his country up for an initiative without prior consent is completely unacceptable.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha had said he was surprised by the latest "unnecessarily confrontational" statements from Magyar regarding Ukraine, including his insistence that Hungary is not a member of the Carpathian Eight and that his government will not allow oil storage facilities to be built in Hungary for Ukraine's needs.

Sybiha had added that although former prime minister Viktor Orbán has gone, "his policies of obstructionism and isolationism continue to thrive".

"I am helping you. To claim that a sovereign country is a member of an international cooperation (Carpathian Integration) without prior consultation or consent of the country concerned is completely unacceptable. Just to give you an example: Hi, we have formed a football team in the next village. We don't know each other, but you are in it, and you have to bring the ball," Magyar wrote on X in response to a post by Sybiha.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Anita Orbán joined the discussion, saying that the new Hungarian government "has made quite a few gestures of goodwill towards Ukraine" since it came to power.

"So there is no analogy here with the obstructionist policy that was pursued by Viktor Orbán," she said.

Read also: Hungary's "punishment" for Ukraine: how Magyar aims to humiliate Kyiv and block its EU future