By JUSTIN SPIKE, Associated Press
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban made veiled comparisons on Sunday between the Soviet troops that attacked Hungary throughout the 1956 revolution and the institutions of the European Union today.
Marking the 66th anniversary of that crushed rebellion, Orban suggested that the EU, which has sought to rein in democratic backsliding in Hungary, would find yourself just like the Soviet Union, which dissolved greater than three a long time ago.
“Let’s not hassle with those that shoot at Hungary from the shadows or from the heights of Brussels. They are going to find yourself where their predecessors did,” Orban said in a speech to a select group of guests in the agricultural city of Zalaegerszeg in western Hungary, breaking with a convention of giving a speech in Budapest on the anniversary.
His absence from the capital on considered one of Hungary’s most significant national holidays comes as his government faces growing pressure from a sustained wave of protests by Hungarian teachers and students.
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The educators demand higher wages and higher working conditions. One other protest was planned on Sunday in Budapest.
Orban, who characterizes his form of presidency as an “illiberal democracy,” can also be facing the specter of cuts to EU funding over his democratic record and perceived corruption.
In search of to salvage some funding, the Hungarian parliament recently passed recent anti-graft laws. However the country still risks losing billions of euros in funding as punishment over perceived breach of democratic practices — something that has caused the currency and economy to weaken recently.
“We were here when the primary conquering empire attacked us, and we’ll be here when the last one collapses,” Orban declared on Sunday. “We are going to bear it after we must, and we’ll beat back when we will. We draw swords when there may be a likelihood, and we resist when long years of oppression come.”
“We’re victorious even after we are defeated,” Orban said.
The Oct. 23 national holiday commemorates the start of a 1956 popular rebellion against Soviet repression that began in Budapest and spread across the country.
After Hungary’s Stalinist leader was successfully ousted and Soviet troops were forced out of the capital, a directive from Moscow sent the Red Army back into Budapest and brutally suppressed the revolution, killing as many as 3,000 civilians and destroying much of town.
The vacation, which looms large in Hungary’s historical memory as a freedom fight against Russian repression, comes as war rages in neighboring Ukraine where Moscow has occupied large swaths of the country and illegally annexed 4 regions.
Orban, widely considered Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest ally within the EU, has vigorously lobbied against the bloc imposing sanctions on Moscow, though the nationalist leader has ultimately voted for all sanctions packages.
Alone amongst its neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe, Hungary has refused to provide Ukraine with weapons or to permit their transfer across its borders. Nevertheless, Orban has declared that Moscow’s invasion is “clear aggression,” and that his government supports Ukraine’s right to territorial integrity.
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