“That’s not a possible membership. That’s an impossible membership. It’s totally impossible that Ukraine becomes a member of NATO,” he responded.

“If we let Ukraine into NATO, we basically import the war into NATO, which means a Third World War, and we don’t want to reach that. So… that’s a no-go for us when it comes to the idea of membership of Ukraine to NATO,” Szijjártó added.

The acceptance of a new member state into NATO requires a unanimous decision by alliance members, meaning Hungary alone can block Ukraine’s membership. Budapest isn’t alone, however, with Slovakia, Germany, and the United States also opposing its membership to various degrees.

Turkey, one of NATO’s most powerful members, has been shaky on the subject, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this month that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan personally supports Ukraine’s membership.

After sustained ambiguity from President Joe Biden’s administration, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth clarified in February that Ukrainian membership in NATO is not “realistic.”

Ukraine has sought NATO membership for years, amending its constitution in 2019 to make NATO membership a strategic goal. The country’s leadership views NATO membership as essential to stave off Russian designs on its territory.

Szijjártó gave a bleak picture of the Russia-Ukraine War, saying that Ukraine could only lose more territory the longer the war continues.

“The battlefield reality is obvious — Russia is moving forward, Ukraine is being pushed back. So it’s not that the front line would move towards the east. The front line is moving towards the west. So the sooner it ends, the sooner it ends with a ceasefire, for example, the less territories Ukraine will lose on the front,” he said.

The only way for the war to come to an end, Szijjártó argued, is for the U.S. and Russia to reach a broad deal that would go beyond peace in the current war. He drew on Hungary’s historical experience to argue that detente was in the best interest of Hungary, Ukraine, and everyone else.

“We have been living in Central Europe. We have been living in a place that was a loser of the time when the world was divided into blocks. So we know how it feels when the U.S. and Russia are not having good relations. Then we are usually losers of that situation, and we don’t want to be losers anymore,” he said.

Prior to President Donald Trump’s pivot to warmer ties with the Kremlin, Zelensky maintained that either NATO membership or clearance to develop nuclear weapons was a requirement for an acceptable peace deal.

Trump has quashed those aspirations, and now a deal outlining a joint rare earth mineral venture in exchange for peace is likely to be struck.

The president’s newfound detente with Russia is welcome in Budapest, where U.S.-Russia cooperation is doubly beneficial to their geopolitical position.

“In all cases, when Russia and the U.S. are able to build up a good relationship, [it] is good news for us, then we take the benefits. So that’s why I think that Ukraine, being similarly a Central European country, they can take the most advantage or profit out of a U.S. Russia deal,” Szijjártó said.

The War in Ukraine was one of the main topics that Szijjártó discussed with State Secretary Marco Rubio when the two met hours before his interview with the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.

The foreign minister told the Washington Examiner that, during the meeting, Rubio outlined a U.S. position on Ukraine that was fully in line with Hungary’s — which was “the best possible news we could get.”

“For the last three years, we have been under tremendous attack in Europe, and we used to be under attack from Washington as well,” he said, saying Hungary was criticized for wanting to keep the channels of communication open with Russia and why they have not delivered weapons to Ukraine and offered full-throated support for Ukraine.

“And now we are so happy that there’s an administration here in place in Washington which has a totally, totally same position as we do have when it comes to the war,” he added.

When asked if Hungary’s stance on the specifics of a peace deal was deferring to Washington, Szijjártó said that Hungary had “to give all our support to President Trump and to the American administration to negotiate through that agreement.”

Hungary’s international stance has earned it the ire of many of its neighbors, including longtime friends such as Poland. But Szijjártó argued that Hungary’s stance is part of a coherent grand strategy to foster communication and prevent the world from being “divided into blocks.”

“We want the age of connectivity to come. You know, we were able to carry out a strategy which is called economic neutrality, which means that German, American, Chinese, Japanese, Korean companies do invest in Hungary as well,” he said.

Hungary’s economic neutrality allows it to both reap the benefits of wider investment and foster warmer relations through ostensibly hostile countries working together in the Hungarian market.

“We are building a new nuclear power plant with the Russian main contractor applying American, French, German, Swiss subcontractors,” Szijjártó cited as an example.

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Aside from the economic benefits and fostering warmer relations between great powers, the strategy is also intended as a nationalistic one to keep what Budapest sees as undesirable globalist forces in check.

“We think that as a small and landlocked country, our interest is that the most possible investments are attracted to the country, and on top of that, we carry out a very patriotic kind of political strategy, because we want to preserve our national identity,” Szijjártó said. “We want to preserve our national specificities. We are not ready to be melted in a European pot. Let’s put it this way: we are absolutely against a European Superstate to be built up.”