Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó discussed with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov how to hinder Ukraineʼs accession to the European Union.
The transcript of Szijjartoʼs conversations with Lavrov was published by investigative journalists from the VSquare, FRONTSTORY, Delfi Estonia, The Insider, and ICJK projects.
One of the key episodes is a conversation on July 2, 2024, the day of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbanʼs visit to Kyiv. After the trip, Lavrov asked Szijjártó about the progress of the issue of starting negotiations on Ukraineʼs accession to the EU.
Also during this conversation, Lavrov asks to send him a document. Szijjártó agrees to transfer it through the Hungarian embassy in Moscow — the document was then to be received by the Russian ministerʼs chief of staff.
The records do not specify which document this is, but one EU official suggests it could have been a negotiating framework document, which was already public at the time.
In another conversation, dated June 17, the ministers discuss the issue of national minorities in Ukraine. Szijjártó speaks of the need to “restore minority rights”, which as he says have been lost.
Lavrov, in response, shifts the conversation to the Russian minority in Ukraine and makes it clear that this issue could affect Ukraineʼs accession to the EU.
A separate block of recordings concerns a conversation after talks between the US and Russian leaders in Alaska. Szijjártó says that the summit without the participation of the EU and Ukraine caused concern among European partners, and is trying to find out how everything really went.
He refers to media reports about the canceled dinner between Putin and US President Donald Trump and the Russian leaderʼs quick departure from the US.
Szijjarto asks directly if this indicates tension or disappointment between the parties. Lavrov replies that the dinner was supposedly not canceled, and adds with irony that he is not particularly interested in American cuisine.
- This is the second part of the VSquare investigation. In the first, the journalists reported that in 2023-2025, Szijjártó regularly contacted Lavrov and passed on information about internal discussions in the EU and Hungary. They also spoke about attempts to remove individual Russian companies and people from sanctions.
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