The release in Hungary of several Ukrainian prisoners of war, held by the Russian armed forces, has once again opened a gap in relations between Budapest and Kyiv, which have been especially tense since the beginning of the war due to the obstacles of the Government of Viktor Orbán to the successive rounds of economic sanctions by the European Union against Moscow.
As this latest incident reminds us once again, the attitude of the Hungarian Executive towards the Russian invasion has nothing to do only with Orbán’s openly pro-Russian positions, but also with ethnic and territorial conflicts that go back to 1920, when the Trianon treaty was signed, which dismembered the former Greater Hungary and left scattered Hungarian minority communities in several neighboring countries.
The war has reignited those tensions. Without prior communication with Kyiv, on June 9, 11 Ukrainian, but ethnically Hungarian, prisoners of war arrived by surprise in Hungary, originating from the eastern Transcarpathian region, bordering Ukraine, where the community numbers some 150,000 people. It is possible that they have Hungarian nationality, since since 2010 Budapest has granted passports to thousands of citizens residing in Ukraine, Romania and Serbia.
Although the Magyar Executive claims to have had no role in these efforts, officially carried out by the Hungarian charity service of the Order of Malta and the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dimitró Kuleba, maintains that the purpose of this “ secret operation” was none other than reinforcing the figure of the Hungarian leader. “There was only one goal: Orbán had to show the Hungarians inside and outside of Hungary that he is the only one who defends them.”
Asked about the conflict, the European Commission has been critical of the way in which Budapest has managed the operation, in which, contrary to what is provided by law, it has not involved the International Red Cross. “It is very important that the Hungarian authorities involved and active in the case explain to their Ukrainian partners what has happened, how, what role Hungary has played, who was involved and who was not, and how it was managed,” said the Foreign Affairs spokesman, Peter Stano.
The Ukrainian government assures that its consular representatives in Hungary have not been able to have contact with the prisoners. This week, according to the Hungarian Foreign Minister, Péter Szijjártó, three of the eleven prisoners taken from Russia have been able to return to Ukraine. Technically, from the moment they leave the country where they were being held they are no longer prisoners of war, and Budapest claims to have no control over them. They are “free” to return to Ukraine, if they wish, they say. Ukrainian authorities disagree and say they are isolated, without access to consular assistance.
Improving the protection of minorities is one of the seven points contained in the European Commission’s recommendation to Ukraine to achieve its goal of opening EU accession negotiations by the end of the year. According to the oral evaluation presented yesterday to the European foreign ministers in Stockholm, this is one of the chapters that Kyiv has not yet complied with and in which more efforts are requested. The matter always appears in the list of grievances that the Hungarian government presents whenever something related to Ukraine is negotiated in the EU or NATO.
A year before the start of the Russian invasion, Budapest warned that it would veto Ukraine’s accession to the Alliance as long as it did not repeal the law restricting the use of minority languages ??– including Hungarian – in education, legislation that has been condemned. by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, the body for the defense of human rights on the continent. At the beginning of the year, the Hungarian Foreign Minister demanded that the Ukrainian government improve the treatment of the minority in the Transcarpathian oblast, where he assures that there have been “concentrated” attacks against this community.
Since the start of the war, the Hungarian government has taken in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees and sent humanitarian aid to the country, but it has stood firm in its decision not to provide Kyiv with weapons and has put sticks in the wheels of all the decisions adopted by the EU against Moscow, although in the end, after obtaining some concession, it has always given in. This same week, he gave the green light to the adoption of the eleventh round of economic sanctions, and, according to diplomatic sources, he is expected to lift his veto on the increase in funds from the European Peace Facility, the instrument that finances the shipment of armament to Ukraine.
