You didn’t want me to lecture you in person.

So I’ll just have to lecture from here at home.

Diplomatic tensions are escalating between Germany and Hungary after Budapest canceled a meeting between Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, that had been planned for Monday in Budapest.

The unusual last-minute cancellation — tantamount to a diplomatic éclat — comes after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other EU leaders strongly criticized a trip by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

Baerbock had planned to raise the issue of Orbán’s meeting with Putin during her visit to Budapest on Monday. But “to our surprise, the Hungarian side canceled” the appointment with Szijjártó “at short notice,” a German foreign ministry official told reporters late Friday.