Hungary’s military neutrality towards the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine angers the West much more than Serbia’s economic neutrality.
Viktor Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas confirmed that his country foiled plots by some foreign spy agencies, including those of unnamed nominal NATO allies, to redirect Hungarian-purchased arms and ammo to Ukraine and Africa where they’d respectively be used directly and indirectly against Russia. Hungary remains military neutral in the NATO-Russian dimension of the New Cold War despite going along with the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions. Orban has also recently sought to mediate in Ukraine.
This is the opposite approach of neighboring Serbia, which hasn’t gone along with the West’s anti-Russian sanctions but whose President Aleksandar Vucic said in summer 2023 that he’s not opposed to other countries redirecting their ammo purchases from his country to Ukraine for use against Russia. That followed reports from spring’s Pentagon leaks alleging that Serbia was arming Ukraine, which Belgrade denied, but its leader’s aforesaid policy position raises questions about its sincerity.
For all practical intents and purposes, it can thus be concluded that Serbia isn’t militarily neutral in the NATO-Russian dimension of the New Cold War, though this surprisingly hasn’t harmed ties with Moscow. Those foreign spy agencies that sought to redirect Hungarian-purchased arms and ammo to Ukraine and Africa for use against Russia therefore knew that their plots wouldn’t harm its ties with Moscow either. What they apparently wanted, however, was to discredit Orban’s envisaged mediation role in Ukraine.
Unlike Serbia, his country is a member of the EU and NATO, and Orban currently serves as the rotating President of the Council of the European Union. The optics of summer’s shuttle diplomacy between Ukraine, Russia, China, and the US (where he met with Trump) infuriated European leaders, who felt that he exploited his role to imbue himself with undeserved normative authority to mediate. They fiercely oppose his peace efforts since none of them want to end the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine.
It’s childish to countenance, but in their minds, they probably really thought that redirecting Hungarian-purchased arms and ammo to Ukraine and Africa could somehow discredit him or at least serve as an asymmetrical response to the uncomfortable political optics that his shuttle diplomacy caused for them. Evidence of Hungarian arms and ammo in those battlefields, especially after clashes that lead to the deaths of Russian troops or associated PMCs, could serve as the pretext for manufacturing faux scandals.
Neither Russia, China, nor Trump if he returns to the presidency would lend credence to the artificial narrative that would predictably be spun alleging that Hungary was double-dealing this whole time by arming Russia’s adversaries behind its back so it wouldn’t have any effect on his mediation efforts. After all, he was viciously attacked by his Western peers for refusing to participate in their schemes to arm Ukraine, which proved how serious their intra-bloc tensions have become over this sensitive issue.
By contrast, the pressure placed upon Serbia only amounted to a half-hearted Color Revolution attempt over the summer that even Vucic himself arguably didn’t take as seriously as he claimed as proven by him shortly thereafter clinching a French warplane deal less than a month later. If anything, it’s the supposed tensions between the West and Serbia over this sensitive issue that’s the real charade, not those within the West over Hungary’s military neutrality towards the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine.
As was already explained, Serbia isn’t militarily neutral for all practical intents and purposes, which is much more meaningful from the West’s perspective than its refusal to sanction Russia. Their spy agencies and presumably also Ukraine’s accordingly went to great lengths to discredit Orban through the plots that his chief of staff just confirmed were foiled all while wining and dining Vucic. This shows that Hungary’s military neutrality angers them much more than Serbia’s economic neutrality.