Austrian Foreign Minister to pro-russian party: Will you continue to be neutral when Austria is attacked?


Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg criticized the position of the right-wing populist pro-russian Austrian Freedom Party, which criticizes Vienna’s support for Ukraine. The head of the Austrian foreign policy said during a speech in the Federal Council of Austria, ukrinform.ua reported.
“I would like to make something very clear to the previous speakers and the parties present here: the Austrian federal government has taken a very clear foreign policy line in each of these cases and will continue to follow it, unlike some parties who do not know whether they want to stay in the room when the President of Ukraine Zelensky speaks, or who do not know whether they are neutral in relation to the terrorist organization Hamas, or to the democratic state of Israel or who believe that they can maintain peace and neutrality by bowing to russia – for I think this is a misunderstanding of foreign policy and the policy of neutrality,” Schallenberg said.“Do we need systems in which one state believes that just because it is bigger and has nuclear weapons, it can take whatever it wants from its neighbor? Will you, dear FPÖ [Freedom Party of Austria], still remain neutral when we will be attacked? Will you then say, “Ah, now we must remain neutral?”, asked Schallenberg.
“Just to clarify once again: if someone cannot distinguish a victim from a criminal in Ukraine, and makes a change of concepts and calls Ukraine itself a belligerent party, then I consider it quite adventurous. After all, what are we talking about? Not so much about Ukraine, but about this fact: a planet where someone simply says: I want to take over my neighbor now because I deny his right to exist, and I’ll just take a part of him because it suits me… This is a planet that is very dangerous for us,” the Austrian minister stressed.
