Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban dismissed allegations that Hungarian drones violated Ukrainian airspace last week as irrelevant even if they had, as “Ukraine is not an independent, sovereign country”, he said in an interview on the Harcosok órája (Warriors’ Hour) podcast on September 29.

The statement echoes the Kremlin’s line that the current government in Kyiv was installed in a coup d'état in 2024 and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is not the legitimate president as his five-year term in office expired in May this year. Under the Ukrainian constitution, elections cannot be held while martial law is in effect.

Orban’s comments are bound to raise hackles as the come at the end of a week where Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has been trading very public barbs with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha on social media over the issue, after Zelenskiy reported that a Hungarian reconnaissance drone had entered Ukrainian airspace on September 26. Zelenskiy claimed that the drone was spying on Ukrainian infrastructure near their mutual border.

Sybiha said that Ukraine's Armed Forces had documented the drone’s path and presented visual evidence of the incursion on September 27. “For the blind Hungarian officials,” Sybiha said, posting a flight path image as proof.

Szijjarto has rejected the claim as fabricated. “Zelenskiy is becoming obsessed with anti-Hungarian sentiment,” he said. “He is seeing ghosts.” Szijjarto added that Ukraine was attempting to discredit itself through baseless accusations.

Orban has tried to downplay the incident, which comes on the back of a drone incursion on September 10 by Russian drones into Polish and Romanian airspace. Orban suggested that Ukraine’s financial dependence on Western aid undermines its statehood.

“Whether two, three or four Hungarian drones crossed the border or not is not the issue,” Orban said. “Let’s say they flew a few metres into the country – so what? Ukraine is not an independent, sovereign country; we are the ones keeping it funded, so it should not behave as if it were sovereign.”

Orban also argued that Hungary had no military intent and questioned why a drone would be sent to Ukraine’s western Zakarpattia region, far from the front lines in the east. “If the West decides not to give a single forint tomorrow, Ukraine could go bankrupt,” he said.

The incident marks a further deterioration in Hungary–Ukraine relations, already strained by Budapest’s opposition to EU arms funding for Kyiv and its ongoing criticism of Ukraine’s treatment of ethnic Hungarians in Zakarpattia.