The leaders of several far-right parties in Europe put their differences aside on Saturday to agree on a joint statement lambasting Russia for its role in the Ukraine conflict.
"Russia's military actions on Europe's eastern border have led to the brink of war," said a joint statement issued at the end of a two-day meeting in Madrid, the Spanish media reported.
The conference was hosted by Santiago Abascal of the Spanish party Vox and attended by the heads of government of Poland and Hungary, Mateusz Morawiecki and Viktor Orban, as well as French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, among others.
"We are the ones who defend Europe. We will not allow the flag of the hammer and sickle to be raised here, nor the crescent flag, nor the dark flag of the globalization elites," Abascal said in his closing speech.
The joint declaration came despite the parties' often divergent positions regarding Moscow. Orban, for example, is considered a close ally of Vladimir Putin, while Morawiecki has repeatedly criticized the Russian president.
'External aggression'
They agreed to "work to ensure that European nations act in solidarity in the face of the threat of external aggression." The statement expressed concerns about Moscow's foreign policy but also about the "lack of a common European position."
The meeting in the Spanish capital followed a similar event in Warsaw in early December, which brought together high-ranking representatives from 15 right-wing parties.
At that conference, they agreed to hold regular meetings and to coordinate votes in the European Parliament.
