Hungary's President Laszlo Solyom also said that recent events in the Caucasus region had given a disquieting topicality to events in Czechoslovakia forty years ago and events in Hungary fifty-two years in the past. In a manner of speaking, there is a parallel between the armed conflict of Russia and Georgia and events of 1956 and 1968, he said, for the use of force and violence against a sovereign nation in opposition to international law was condemnable in 1956, 1968 and is condemnable today. Great powers have no right to use force to exert their will, he said.

Education and Culture Minister István Hiller also apologized on behalf of the government for Hungary’s role in crushing the Prague Spring.

On the night of August 20-21, 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 2,000 tanks entered Czechoslovakia and occupied the country by morning, effectively halting a period of political liberalization.