Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, made the comment in an interview with the TVN24 news channel on Monday, the state PAP news agency reported.
It came after Orban's governing coalition won Sunday’s general election in Hungary, winning a constitutional majority of 135 seats in the 199-seat parliament.
At a rally afterwards, the Hungarian prime minister said his coalition had defeated “the left-wing opposition,” “Brussels bureaucrats” and “Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky” in the vote, according to news outlets.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Photo: EPA/ZOLTAN FISCHER
Tusk commented: “These grim words and the grim cackle that we’ve heard in Budapest demonstrate … that the war in Ukraine is a big confrontation over democracy, Western values, and human rights and freedoms, a confrontation that is also taking place here, in Europe, in Poland and in Hungary.”
‘Putin’s fifth column in Europe’
The former European Council president added that Orban was “an especially brazen, blatant and shameless” ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He told TVN24 that Orban's words came "just hours after the discovery of the Russian massacre in Bucha, Ukraine."
Tusk accused Orban of pursuing “Putin's model of power” at home, based on “large-scale, organised state corruption.”
The former Polish prime minister, who leads the Civic Platform (PO) party, said the West should stop its “policy of appeasement" towards “aggressors and dictators” after Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
He suggested that the European Union should assess “whether Orban’s Hungary is really still a part of the bloc.”
Tusk also called on Poland’s ruling conservatives to sever ties with Orban, accusing the Hungarian leader of “building Putin’s fifth column in Europe.”
Tuesday is day 41 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, tvn24.pl