European leaders are close to discussing whether the European Union can send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was quoted as saying on Friday.
Orbán, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was speaking to local radio station Kossuth Rádió on Friday morning about Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, media outlet Mandiner reported.
Earlier in March, the Russian government mentioned Hungary as being in a group of foreign states that it said had committed "unfriendly actions against Russia, its companies and citizens," despite a longstanding amicable relationship between Orbán and Putin.
"The war is getting more and more brutal and bloody," Orbán was quoted by Mandiner as saying on Friday.
The Hungarian prime minister also reportedly said that European leaders are close to considering whether the EU can send peacekeeping troops into Ukraine.
"The war is worrying and dangerous for the Hungarian people. Our security is in danger," said Orbán.
Since "the West is providing Ukrainians with more and more modern equipment, I am convinced that the threat of world war is not a literary exaggeration," he said.
"When European and American leaders say that if this continues, we could end up in the third world war, it seems incredibly exaggerated at first, but where I work and where I see the events, this is a real danger at this moment, " Orbán said.
Hungary has refused to supply Kyiv with weapons, despite appeals from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Western leaders for military supplies.
Hungarian Defense Minister Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky said in February that his country does not want to see an escalatation of the war in Ukraine. He said Hungary wants to remain on the side of peace and that it provides humanitarian aid to Ukrainians fleeing the war.
"We live in a time of danger," he said at the time.
Orbán has built strong economic and political ties with Russia but Hungary has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has gone along with a number of EU sanctions packages.
On January 27 Orbán suggested that Western nations have already "drifted" into becoming active participants in the war by providing weapons and money to assist Kyiv. Western countries should instead pursue "a ceasefire and peace talks," he said on Hungarian state radio.
On Friday he said that leaders "need to present arguments so that the warring parties see that a ceasefire is in the interests of both."
Newsweek has contacted the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation via email for comment.
Do you have a tip on a world news story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about the Russia-Ukraine war? Let us know via worldnews@newsweek.com.
Update 03/31/23, 6:28 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.
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