Dear Doctor Deli, Excellencies, Members of the Academic Community,

Thank you for your kind words and for the opportunity to speak with you here today. I know that the University of Ludovika is a very young and dynamic educational institution, which aims to train future civil servants and experts in international relations, military and civil security, and law enforcement. In the current complicated international environment, this type of academic education and research is more important than ever.

I attach particular importance to your College of Visegrad plus Initiative, which brings together students from Visegrad countries. These exchanges facilitate the flow of ideas and foster the common understanding of shared challenges among our young generations.  

Historical moments often arrive without warning, and they bring about dramatic changes to the international environment, our political landscape, and our own lives. I think we're in one of those moments right now, and I would like to use this opportunity, you have given me, to share with you some of my thoughts concerning those common challenges.

Before I dive in, let's talk about Central Europe – an area with shared history and rich cultural heritage. I want to talk about our common legacy, about shared geopolitical lessons that our countries have learned throughout history, including four decades of Soviet rule. These things shape how we approach foreign policy and tell others what we're about.

In 1983, only six years before the Iron Curtain fell, Milan Kundera –one of the key writers and intellectuals of the second half of 20th century –  published an essay called: “The Kidnapped West – The tragedy of Central Europe”. Kundera was born in Brno, died in Paris, and spent much of his life as a European. Or perhaps even more accurately – as a Central European.

 

 

Kundera considered Central Europe as part of the West and its intellectual, political and cultural heritage. The theme of this essay was that, after the Second World War, Moscow kidnapped this region into the Russian sphere of influence. Somewhere, it didn't belong and didn't want to belong.

Kundera believed that Central Europe wasn't just defined by its borders; it was a shared culture and destiny. He saw it as a place where people shared memories, faced similar problems and conflicts, and upheld common traditions. He viewed the Soviet Union's control over Central Europe not only as a political disaster but also as an assault on our civilization.

The opening passage of Kundera's story features the director of a Hungarian news agency who, before the Russians fired on him in 1956, sent a desperate dispatch to the world that said: "we will die for Hungary and Europe".

The Hungarian revolution was drowned in blood, crushed by the belts of Russian tanks. The same tanks invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 and sent Kundera into exile in France. Later, similar brutal tactics were employed to silence Solidarnošč in Poland. 

This common tragic history and a shared desire to join the Euro-Atlantic community of free nations was the driving force behind the Visegrad cooperation, founded 33 years ago.

In this endeavour, we have fully succeeded. This year we are commemorating many milestones on this historical journey. We will remember 35 years of the revolutions that brought freedom to our countries.

In March, we commemorated 25 years since joining NATO; and in few weeks, we will celebrate 20 years since Czechia, Hungary and eight other countries joined the EU. Until today, this remains the single largest EU enlargement.

Those were indeed memorable times. The ugly scar that stretched across our continent was healing, and we all hoped for a future that will bring nothing but peace and prosperity. 

To bring you back to those days, let me recall the words of the then Hungarian Foreign Minister János Martonyi that he pronounced at the signing ceremony that welcomed our countries into NATO 25 years ago.

 I quote: „Through all the struggles for freedom and independence, Hungarians have developed a deep sense of belonging to a larger entity, to the community of Western democracies. For a long time, it has been our aspiration to become part of this family. The best of Hungarians were dreaming of this when fighting foreign occupation and sinister ideologies forced upon them, “end of quote.

János Martonyi is indeed one of the greatest figures of Hungarian and Central European diplomacy. He was very close to my late predecessor, Karel Schwarzenberg, and let me assure you! When he said those words, he spoke for all of the nations in our part of Europe.

Joining NATO in 1999 was a success and an achievement that few believed possible when communist dictatorships were collapsing in Central Europe only ten years earlier.

Unfortunately, having integrated the region into the EU and NATO, we believed that the times of power politics, war and kidnapping were over. At least on our continent. Our vigilance, the vigilance of all of us Europeans, has declined. While Europe was dreaming about eternal peace, Moscow was getting ready for its return.

Today, the same tanks that our fathers and grandfathers witnessed on the streets of Budapest and Prague are killing people in Ukraine.

The scenery is changing, Russia's imperial cruelty continues. As in 1956, 1968 or 1981 the rulers of Russia believe that they are the ones, the only ones, who decide the fate of nations within their reach. As in the past, Moscow knows only one way to deal with those who oppose it - they are to be crushed.  

It is naive to think that if Russia won in Ukraine, its tanks would stop at our borders. Moscow’s goal is not only to destroy Ukraine and assimilate it into its brutal mindset as a purely Russian territory. It is about subverting our part of Europe. It wants to re-abduct the West into its world of tyranny and turmoil, traditions and behaviour.

Russia declares it is fighting the “collective West”. This may be one of Putin´s truthful revelations, if not the only one. The war in Ukraine is our war. Our future is at stake. And make no mistakes! If we allow Russia to destroy Ukraine, if its aggression goes unpunished, other predators around the globe will follow suit.

Ukraine is fighting for its survival. However, it is fighting also on our behalf. To paraphrase the desperate cry of the director of Hungarian news agency from Kundera’s essay “Ukrainians are dying for Ukraine and for Europe”. We firmly believe that we must support Ukraine politically and militarily. For our own sake.

Russian imperial ambitions do not have limits, unless we set them. The late president Václav Havel once said: “the Russian problem for many centuries is that Russia doesn't exactly know where it begins and where it ends.“ Indeed, if it were allowed to, Russia would not hesitate to take on the former Eastern bloc territories. A defeat of Ukraine would bring the winner new resources and open the gate for other “special military operations” in Central and Eastern Europe.

Let us recall that already back in 2005 Vladimir Putin said that the collapse of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. We shall not forget demands Kremlin made in 2021 just a few months before the invasion, when Russia pretended to negotiate: "Withdraw your forces to pre-1997 positions or face the consequences." In other words, Putin requested a return to a time when none of the states Moscow had previously controlled, were part of the Transatlantic Alliance and covered by its security guarantees. Those statements, those demands attest to historical revisionism. The second one was a clear effort to undermine the foundations on which NATO and our security is built.

Two years into the Russian aggression, the conflict in Ukraine has evolved into a war of attrition. This is the crucial moment! We must remain focused on Ukraine's defence needs and increase pressure on Russia and its allies through sanctions. We must continue to conduct active and smart multilateral diplomacy.

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

Hungary is now preparing for its second Presidency of the Council of the European Union. It will be an extremely important Presidency. The new European Commission will be formed following the June elections into the European Parliament. Czechia wishes Hungary a great success. We are ready to help, and we are ready to share our experience from our recent Presidency. We agree on most of your priorities - strengthening the EU's competitiveness; supporting cooperation with the countries of the Western Balkans and the South Caucasus, including building the rule of law; the need to combat illegal migration. At the same time, one issue will be crucial for Europe’s future.

That issue is how we deal with Russia's aggression against the West.

I believe that our two countries have a special role in this struggle. We are the ones who escaped from the prison that Moscow built for us and around us after the Second World War. 

We know what it is like to live in that prison. We don’t want to live in it again. We need to keep on reminding those who were looking at this prison from the outside what an awful place it was. And that Moscow cannot be allowed to build it again and drag others into it against their will.

Czechia and Hungary can be proud of their membership in NATO and in the EU and its role in promoting democracy, freedom and security in the world. Let us remember our history lessons and continue working together to maintain stability and security in our region and globally.

 

The world is a complicated place. It has always been. The choices ahead of us aren't simple, just as they weren't 30, 40, or 80 years ago. But we can't afford to be passive. We are facing challenges that we once thought were a thing of the past. There is a war raging in Europe, the biggest we have seen in decades.

The good news is that we have the means to stop it. To bring peace. Kundera, in his French exile, had only his name, his literary talent and his pen.

We have the resources, we have the economic capacity, we are a strong alliance of free nations and we know who is the victim and who is the criminal.

Let me quote the great Hungarian writer Sándor Márai: “The great, decisive moments that broadly govern our lives are far less conscious at the time than they seem later when we are reminiscing and taking stock,” observed in his novel “Ester’s inheritance”.

Márai's family was one those with Central European destiny. He was born in Košice /Kassa in Hungarian, his father was a member of the Czechoslovak parliament between the two wars. Opposing both Nazi and Communist dictatorships, Márai chose exile in 1948 and died in California few months before the fall of the Iron curtain. He first published Ester’s inheritance in 1939. He sensed heavy clouds on the horizon of the history that will change the destiny of Central European nations for decades to come. We shall not allow the history to repeat itself.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

to conclude, let me touch upon one aspect that is fundamental to our success – the resilience of our societies, their cohesion, the level of support and trust of our citizens for the policies we promote. Our societies must be aware of the danger we face, which we can collectively defeat.

We live in an era of social media, in a world of new platforms and abundant information sources. In this information jungle, many people search for their own identity. They lack bonds. They have questions about the meaning of their own lives and about the future of our societies, where one crisis follows another. 

An increasing number of our citizens wish for a strongman, someone who “puts the world in order”, who would “make the world simple again”. The same people, however, have never been more attached to free speech and their right to have an opinion about everything on social media.

These developments have changed the nature of societal debates, and in fact of society itself. People only seek to win the argument; they are less interested in revealing the truth; it is a one-way traffic. The opponent becomes an enemy.

However, democracy is a conversation. Dialogue involves listening and understanding. How to revive democratic dialogue will be one of the major questions in the years to come."

It is not the first time we stand at a crossroads. The outcome depends on us; we hold our fate in our own hands. I wish us to find the right answers and come out of this struggle strong.

Thank you for your attention and I am looking forward to our discussion.